Commentary
Public policy most often goes wrong because good intentions walk into a room full of real-world incentives—and lose. Canada’s Medical Assistance in Dying program is perhaps a modern example. When MAID became law in 2016, it was sold as a narrow, tightly controlled act of mercy: only for competent adults facing unbearable, terminal suffering, with death reasonably foreseeable, multiple safeguards, and rare cases. The messaging was that this is about compassion at the very end of life, nothing more.
