Canada’s MAiD is meant for those whose death is reasonably foreseeable. Now an 83-year-old grandmother’s family alleges she was euthanised without her consent

An 83-year-old Canadian grandmother died through Medical Assistance in Dying (MAiD) in July. Her family says she did not want it and has asked authorities to investigate whether she understood what was happening and gave the required consent.

The case has now become part of a wider debate about Canada's assisted-dying system — including an uncomfortable question that has circulated online for years: How much money can MAiD potentially save Canada's healthcare system?

The case that has reignited the debate

The woman was Brigitte Stegemann, an 83-year-old resident of an Ontario carae home. Her granddaughter, Brigitte Kranendonk, has alleged that Stegemann had previously rejected MAiD and that questions remained about whether she had the capacity to make the decision.


According to Kranendonk's account, her grandmother had stage 4 stomach cancer and died through MAiD on July 10 at The Pearl care home in Cannifton, Ontario.

The family has asked Ontario authorities to investigate the circumstances surrounding the death. Belleville Police have also confirmed that the matter is under investigation by its Criminal Investigations Division.

Kranendonk has alleged that her grandmother struggled to understand questions during a capacity assessment. She has also questioned how the MAiD paperwork was completed and whether her grandmother provided final consent.

Those claims have not been established by an independent investigation. The care home and MAiD practitioners have not publicly provided a detailed response in the reports cited above, while police have said they cannot provide further information because the investigation is ongoing.

The allegations have nevertheless put one of the most important safeguards in Canada's MAiD system — consent — back under the spotlight.

Another Canadian case is being shared online

The Stegemann case has also been discussed alongside the story of Allison Ducluzeau, a British Columbia woman who was diagnosed with stage 4 abdominal cancer.

Ducluzeau told Global News in 2023 that she had been unable to obtain the treatment she wanted in Canada and was offered MAiD. She subsequently travelled to the United States for treatment, spending more than $200,000 on surgery, chemotherapy, scans, travel and accommodation, according to her account.

Ducluzeau later said she would have preferred to receive that treatment in Canada.

Her experience has since been used in arguments about whether gaps in healthcare access can influence how vulnerable patients view their options. But her case does not establish that MAiD was offered as a substitute for treatment generally, nor does it demonstrate that Canada's system was designed to reduce healthcare spending.

That distinction matters when looking at the numbers.

So, how much could MAiD save?

There is, in fact, a published economic estimate that has often become part of this debate.

A 2017 study, by Aaron J Trachtenberg and Braden Manns, examined the potential costs and savings associated with introducing MAiD in Canada. Researchers estimated that MAiD could reduce annual healthcare spending by between C$34.7 million and C$138.8 million.

They compared those potential savings with estimated direct implementation costs of between C$1.5 million and C$14.8 million. The researchers' reasoning was straightforward: some people receiving MAiD would otherwise require expensive end-of-life medical care. If their lives were shortened, some of those healthcare costs would not occur.

But there was an important caveat. The figures were projections, not a government budget target. The researchers used mortality and end-of-life cost data, along with evidence from countries where assisted death was already legal, to model possible outcomes.

In other words, the study estimated a potential economic effect. It did not say Canada should encourage MAiD because doing so would save money.

Where did the $149 million figure come from?

Another number frequently mentioned in online discussions is C$149 million.

That figure came from Canada's Parliamentary Budget Officer. A 2020 report estimated that the availability of MAiD could result in approximately C$149 million in annual net reductions in provincial healthcare costs for 2021.

The estimate included the expected effects of changes to MAiD eligibility. It was a fiscal projection, rather than evidence that the Canadian government had created MAiD as a cost-cutting programme.

The distinction became particularly important after social-media claims circulated suggesting that Canada had a plan to save enormous sums by euthanising large numbers of people.

Fact-checking of those claims found that the much larger figures being shared online came from hypothetical economic modelling rather than a government plan or target.

What about the trillion-dollar claim?

A 2025 academic paper by researchers including Joshua Pearce examined the potential economic implications of expanding MAiD.

The paper discussed scenarios involving much broader use of medically assisted death and calculated potentially very large healthcare savings under those hypothetical conditions.

But that is very different from saying Canada had adopted a policy to generate those savings.

Pearce told AFP that the research was an economic sensitivity analysis, rather than a forecast of how many Canadians should receive MAiD. The paper itself also discusses the ethical implications of using economic considerations in assisted-dying policy.

This is where much of the online debate becomes muddled: a calculation of possible savings is not the same thing as evidence of a government policy designed to achieve those savings.

The uncomfortable question behind the numbers

The financial dimension of MAiD is nevertheless real.

The 2017 CMAJ study explicitly examined healthcare savings because end-of-life treatment can be expensive. Its authors estimated that potential savings could exceed the direct costs of implementing MAiD.

That does not, by itself, answer the ethical question of whether cost should have any role in decisions involving the end of a person's life.

And it certainly does not establish that an individual patient was offered MAiD because they were considered expensive to treat.

Those are separate questions.

The case of Brigitte Stegemann now puts the focus somewhere even more fundamental: whether a person genuinely understood the choice being offered and freely consented to it.

That is ultimately a question for the ongoing investigation and Canada's medical and legal oversight systems — not something that can be settled by the healthcare-cost estimates alone.