MAID: The Dark Side of Canadian Compassion — the new book by Sheila Gunn ReidA Rebel News project
The MAID Book
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The new book from Rebel News · Available now

MAID The Dark Side of Canadian Compassion Sheila Gunn Reid

One in every 20 deaths in Canada is now a death by MAID. This is the book about the people behind that number — and the people who built the fastest-growing euthanasia program in the world.

MAID: The Dark Side of Canadian Compassion — paperback cover
1 in 20deaths in Canada are now deaths by MAID
16,499Canadians euthanized in 2024 — more than in any other nation on earth
2016the year Canada legalized assisted death for people who were already dying. The safeguards did not last five years.
4 yearsof reporting: 13 recorded interviews, access-to-information files, Order Paper answers, coroners’ reports and committee transcripts

Source: Health Canada, Sixth Annual Report on Medical Assistance in Dying in Canada (2024 data).

About the book

The people behind the number.

Canada legalized assisted death in 2016 for people who were already dying. The safeguards did not last five years. In 2024, 16,499 Canadians were euthanized, more than in any other nation on earth.

This book is about the people behind that number. A psychiatric nurse euthanized hours after she was released from a psychiatric unit following a suicide attempt. A Paralympian and veteran who asked Veterans Affairs for a wheelchair lift and was offered death instead. A Calgary father who knew the date his autistic daughter was scheduled to die, and found no one in the system who had to take his call. Prisoners. The poor and the lonely. And the children the activists want next.

I spent four years on this story: 13 recorded interviews, access-to-information files, Order Paper answers MPs had to fight for, coroners’ reports and the transcripts of the parliamentary committees where the warnings were made and ignored. I follow the money, and I name the people who built the fastest-growing euthanasia program in the world.

Then I show what it will take to stop it.

— Sheila Gunn Reid

Updates

Latest from the book

All updates

The first updates are on their way.

The documentary

The film this book grew from.

In 2024 Sheila Gunn Reid and Kian Simone made MAID: The Dark Side of Canadian Compassion, the Rebel News documentary that took the stories of families living in the aftermath of euthanasia to screenings across the country. The book goes where a film could not: into the files, the money and the names.

Watch the documentary

Official trailer

About the author

Sheila Gunn Reid

Sheila Gunn Reid is Chief Reporter and Senior Editor of Rebel News and host of The Gunn Show. She launched the Help Not Homicide petition in 2022 and, with Kian Simone, made the 2024 documentary MAID: The Dark Side of Canadian Compassion, from which this book grew. She is the author of Independence Blueprint: What Alberta Can Learn From Quebec. She lives in Alberta.

Rebel News · @SheilaGunnReid

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