Warning in advance, this blog discusses the following severe content: Suicide. Reader discretion is advised.
It can not be overstated how emotionally and morally loaded suicide and assisted suicide are as topics. Everyone has strong feelings one way or another, and with good reason. Still, these are important conversations to have nowadays. We are more aware than ever right now about just how important it is to properly manage mental health and also how important bodily autonomy is to a person. Trying to balance these two principles is difficult, and often painful, in practice. Here, I’ll try to dive into the arguments on both ends on the question of assisted suicide, invoking a recent Supreme Court case to try and illustrate the practical justifications for laws against assisted suicide without MAID.
Our country’s Medical Assistance in Dying (MAID) program sought to be the solution and final answer to the problems mentioned above. However, it has come under a lot of criticism, and has even become something of an international meme. It is important to note that much of that criticism comes from large scale misrepresentation of the program. Much of this can be traced back to actions taken by a single caseworker who was immediately investigated as soon as they came to light. That isn’t to diminish people’s real concerns with the program, there are valid criticisms that can be made about MAID, particularly when it comes to issues of mental health and whether someone who would want to commit suicide because of a mental health affliction can be said to have the capacity to make that decision themselves. As of the time of writing this blog, MAID will continue to be unavailable for people suffering purely from mental illness for another year as healthcare teams across the country are carefully trained to ensure that any decisions to make use of MAID are not taken lightly.
On the other side of things, many people support MAID, but there are even people that argue that when a close friend or family member of theirs wants to die, the moral thing to do would be to help them. In that case, why is aiding in a suicide attempt a crime? Well, let’s think about this. Setting aside the MAID program for a second and whether assisting in performing a suicide can ever be morally justified, an assisted suicide and a non-consensual killing share a lot of commonalities in how they appear. Neither of these events generally have a lot of witnesses. It’s not exactly rare for a murderer to have a close association with their victim either. If two people walk into a quiet room and only one leaves, what are the rest of us supposed to think?
R v. B.F.
Murder, the rest of us will think that a murder occurred. This is essentially what happened in the recently decided Supreme Court case of R. v. B.F., where a claimed aid to suicide was held to be attempted murder. In an interesting twist in this case, the victim did actually survive, but, as a result of the method used—insulin overdose—could not recall the events that transpired.
In R. v. B.F., the victim and the accused had a close relationship with each other, being mother and daughter, and the only other person involved was the accused’s young child, who was also injected with a near-lethal dose of insulin and has since suffered severe brain damage. Functionally, there were no witnesses to confirm events. What did exist, however, was a veritable mountain of circumstantial evidence that pointed toward the accused. She was a nurse who had access to the insulin used; she had a motive in denying her ex-husband access to their daughter, and she had also recently written a note that seemed to suggest a planned murder-suicide.
Importantly, in this case, the idea that the mother of the accused was attempting suicide and the accused helped her with it was not one that either the Crown or the accused pushed at trial. It didn’t come up until the matter was appealed to the Court of Appeals.
By all accounts, the evidence seemed to suggest that this was a case of attempted murder, rather than aiding suicide. The court refused to rule on the compatibility of those two charges, but was pretty clear on that fact. A failed murderer trying to excuse her crimes by claiming to assist in a suicide. Working under the idea that it would be better to be convicted of aiding in a suicide than attempted murder.
Circling Back and Wrapping Up
If assisted suicide as a whole were legalized, not only would that open the door to plenty of poorly-adjusted people encouraging self-destructive behaviour for any number of reasons, it would also provide a very useful excuse to even more murderers on trial who only need a reasonable doubt to be determined not guilty. Whatever one’s stance on the issues, MAID does exist. There is now a legal and regulated process for suicide. Having a regulated system allows people in extreme circumstances to make their choices with the guidance of qualified medical personnel, and it does so without opening the door to murderers with excuses.
Some people disagree with the very concept of suicide in all cases, whether on religious grounds, capacity grounds, or for other reasons. For them, the idea of state-sanctioned suicide is distasteful; however, many of us have had the unfortunate experience of watching a loved one suffer from a degenerative and incurable condition. If a person who passes the stringent requirements to be approved for MAID wishes to leave the world on their own terms rather than spend months feeling their body and mind falling apart before ultimately reaching the same end, can it be said that we have the authority to deny them that decision?
This issue is not “solved,” in fact, it may never be solved. Only time will tell how effective this program is. What remains is a delicate topic that people have every right to feel strongly about. If you are, or anyone you know is, considering suicide, please call 988 to reach the suicide crisis helpline.
Bibliography
“Medical assistance in dying: Overview” (27 August 2025), online (education and awareness): <https://www.canada.ca/en/health-canada/services/health-services-benefits/medical-assistance-dying.html>.
R v. B.F., 2025 SCC 41
