Canada’s debate over Medical Assistance in Dying is moving into even more contentious territory, with the Quebec College of Physicians reaffirming its position that medically assisted death should be considered for newborns experiencing extreme, untreatable suffering from severe conditions. The proposal is not Canadian law and would represent a major departure from the country’s existing adult MAiD framework
INR Report: Based on reporting by Frank Bergman for Slay News, with references in the source material to the Quebec College of Physicians and Canada's parliamentary MAiD debate.
Canada's expanding assisted-dying system is again facing a fundamental question about where its boundaries should lie.
According to Slay News, the Quebec College of Physicians — Collège des médecins du Québec (CMQ) has reaffirmed a controversial position first brought prominently before Canada's Parliament in 2022: that MAiD should potentially be available for some newborn babies suffering extreme and unrelievable pain associated with severe malformations or serious medical syndromes.
The issue is fundamentally different from Canada's existing MAiD regime because newborns cannot provide consent.
The proposal would therefore require decisions about deliberately ending an infant's life to be made by adults acting on the child's behalf — raising profound questions about medical authority, parental decision-making, disability, suffering and the protection of patients incapable of expressing their own wishes.
What the Quebec Physicians Are Proposing
The controversy dates back at least to 2022, when Dr Louis Roy appeared on behalf of the Quebec College of Physicians before Parliament's Special Joint Committee on Medical Assistance in Dying.
Roy discussed infants from birth to one year old suffering from extremely severe medical conditions, including profound deformities and syndromes associated with limited life expectancy and significant suffering.
The CMQ has now reaffirmed its position.
According to the statement reproduced in the source material, the College believes MAiD could constitute appropriate treatment for babies experiencing extreme pain that cannot be relieved and who have severe malformations or serious syndromes offering no prospect of survival.
It further argues that parents should have the opportunity to request such care under tightly defined circumstances.
That is significantly narrower than simply proposing MAiD for babies with disabilities — a distinction that is important when assessing the original report's framing.
Nevertheless, the ethical boundary being proposed is unmistakable.
The patient could not personally consent to the decision.
Withdrawal of Treatment Is Not the Same Thing
Medicine already confronts tragic situations in which an infant has little or no realistic prospect of survival.
Parents and doctors can make decisions not to initiate extraordinary treatment, or to withdraw interventions considered futile, while providing palliative care and pain relief.
The proposal described by the Quebec College of Physicians would cross a different threshold.
Instead of allowing an underlying condition to take its course while relieving suffering, MAiD would involve administering medication with the intention of causing death.
That distinction is central to the controversy.
The question is no longer simply how much treatment should medicine provide?
It becomes under what circumstances should medicine intentionally cause the death of a patient who cannot consent?
Canada Has Already Shifted Its MAiD Boundaries
The proposal emerges against a backdrop of substantial changes to Canada's assisted-dying laws.
Canada legalised MAiD in 2016 after its Supreme Court struck down the country's prohibition on assisted suicide. The initial federal legislation applied to eligible adults suffering from serious medical conditions whose natural deaths were reasonably foreseeable.
That boundary was subsequently broadened.
Canada now permits some qualifying adults whose natural deaths are not reasonably foreseeable to access MAiD.
Slay News reports that assisted deaths now account for approximately 5 percent of deaths in Canada, illustrating how significant MAiD has become within the country's healthcare system.
Another expansion remains under debate: allowing people whose sole underlying condition is mental illness to become eligible.
That change is currently scheduled for March 2027, although Canada's Parliament and government continue to debate whether it should proceed.
The infant proposal would cross another qualitatively different boundary because it removes personal consent from the equation entirely.
Canada Rejected the Idea Before
The proposal does not represent an agreed Canadian government policy.
When the issue emerged publicly in 2022, then federal Disabilities Minister Carla Qualtrough rejected it emphatically, saying there was “no world” in which she would accept it.
The fact that the Quebec College of Physicians has reaffirmed its position therefore does not mean Canada's Parliament has approved infant MAiD or that doctors are currently legally permitted to administer MAiD to newborn babies.
Those distinctions are important.
What has changed is that a significant professional medical organisation continues to argue publicly that the option should exist under exceptional circumstances.
The Disability Question
The debate inevitably intersects with disability rights.
Language matters here.
The CMQ position quoted in the source does not advocate assisted death simply because an infant has a disability. It refers specifically to extreme, unrelievable suffering combined with severe malformations or serious syndromes where survival is not realistically expected.
Yet disability advocates can reasonably ask where such criteria would eventually be drawn.
Would eligibility depend upon imminent death? The intensity of pain? Predicted quality of life? The probability of survival? The extent of disability? Or the assessment of physicians and parents about whether continued life is in the child's interests?
Once death becomes an available medical intervention for someone unable to consent, those definitions become critical safeguards rather than abstract philosophical questions.
Concerns About Canada's Existing System
Slay News also points to controversies involving Canada's existing adult MAiD system.
The report references cases reviewed by Ontario's chief coroner where social vulnerability and unmet needs were identified among the circumstances surrounding MAiD deaths.
These included people experiencing isolation, inadequate housing and financial or social difficulties alongside significant medical problems.
Such cases do not establish that Canada's entire MAiD system routinely substitutes death for social support.
They do, however, illustrate why critics argue that eligibility safeguards must consider whether suffering that appears medically irremediable might actually be reduced through housing, financial assistance, psychiatric treatment, disability support or social care.
That concern becomes even more consequential when discussing patients who cannot communicate a choice themselves.
Consent Is the Central Divide
Adult assisted-dying regimes are generally built around the principle of personal autonomy.
A competent adult who meets defined medical criteria makes a voluntary decision about their own life.
An infant cannot exercise that autonomy.
Any newborn MAiD framework would therefore have to be based on a fundamentally different ethical and legal justification: that parents, doctors and ultimately the state can determine that intentionally ending the child's life is in that child's best interests.
Supporters may argue that forcing an infant to endure extreme and untreatable suffering when survival is impossible serves no compassionate purpose.
Opponents can argue that once medicine is authorised intentionally to end the life of someone incapable of consent, an essential safeguard at the heart of assisted dying has disappeared.
That is the real dividing line in this debate.
Does This Affect New Zealand?
The Canadian discussion has direct relevance to New Zealand because this country also operates an assisted-dying regime.
New Zealand's current End of Life Choice framework is substantially narrower than the expansion being discussed in Quebec. The Canadian proposal described in the source does not establish that any comparable expansion is being considered in New Zealand.
But Canada's experience provides an important policy lesson.
Once assisted dying is legalised, eligibility boundaries can remain politically and medically contested. Canada's framework began with competent adults facing serious medical circumstances and has subsequently broadened, while further extensions involving mental illness, minors and now proposals concerning newborns continue to be debated.
For New Zealand, that makes the permanence of statutory safeguards a legitimate public-policy question.
Any future proposal to alter eligibility should therefore identify clearly who qualifies, who decides, what independent review exists, how coercion or conflicts of interest are excluded, whether palliative alternatives have genuinely been exhausted and — above all — whether personal informed consent remains an absolute requirement.
A Boundary Canada Has Not Yet Crossed
The headline is confronting, but the legal position needs to remain clear.
Canada is not currently operating a programme that allows doctors to euthanise newborn babies.
What has happened is that the Quebec College of Physicians has reaffirmed its view that MAiD should be available in narrowly defined circumstances involving newborns facing extreme, unrelievable suffering and severe conditions offering no prospect of survival.
That proposal would require Canada to confront one of the deepest ethical boundaries in assisted dying.
MAiD has traditionally been justified through the autonomous choice of a competent person experiencing intolerable suffering.
A newborn cannot make that choice.
If Canada ever crosses that boundary, the principle underlying the decision would therefore have fundamentally changed — from respecting an individual's decision about their own death to authorising others to decide that death is in another person's best interests.
That is why this debate deserves considerably more scrutiny than either a sensational headline or a reassuring euphemism can provide.
Source: Frank Bergman, Slay News, “Canadian Doctors Renew Push to Euthanize Newborn Babies,” 3 September 2026.
Independent reporting. Original context. Credited sources.