The grieving mother of a 26-year-old Canadian man with diabetes who was suffering from mental illness is speaking out about the country’s medical assistance in dying law – or MAiD – which her son used to end his life.According to Fox News Digital, Kiano Vafaeian died by MAiD on December 30. A Type 1 diabetic since the age of four, Kiano recently lost eyesight in one eye and suffered from nerve damage in his hands and feet during the winter months. After a car accident at the age of 17, he started to experience mental health issues but his mother, Margaret Marsilla, claims this were mostly seasonal.
However, he took a dark turn when, at the age of 22, he lost vision in one eye. It was then that Kiano became obsessed with MAiD.
"He kept on emphasizing about how he could get approved," Marsilla said. "We never thought there would be a chance that any doctor would approve a 22- or 23-year-old at that time for MAiD because of diabetes or blindness."
The MAiD law, which was legalized in Canada in June of 2016, allows patients with “grievous and irremediable” medical conditions to request a lethal drug to end their lives. The family was shocked with a Toronto doctor initially approved Kiano’s request and launched a public campaign on social media to voice their opposition. The pressure led the doctor to withdraw approval. Initially, Kiano was angry with his family but eventually showed signs of improvement and even moved in with them in 2024.
"He tried his best when he was in one of those good highs of life," Marsilla said. "Then winter, fall started coming around, he started changing and then everything that we had worked for from spring and summertime just disappeared… he would start talking about MAID again."
Writing for the Toronto Star, reporter Andrew Phillips says Kiano’s obsession with MAiD led him to “doctor shop,” going from physician to physician until he finally found one in British Columbia – Dr. Ellen Wiebe, a prominent MAiD provider - who was willing to end his life.
“Marsilla believes her son ‘was coached, whether directly or indirectly, on how to frame his symptoms in a way that would meet MAiD eligibility,” Phillips reports.
He goes on to say that many Canadians still think the MAiD system is reserved for terminally ill people to spare them pointless suffering at the end of their lives.
“But that hasn’t been the case for several years,” he writes. “Vafaeian wasn’t terminally ill and his death wasn’t ‘reasonably foreseeable,’ as the law once required. Now, it doesn’t require any such thing. Under MAiD’s ‘Track 2,’ a person need only have a serious and incurable condition, be “enduring physical or psychological suffering’ and have the capacity to provide informed consent.
Kiano’s family believes the MAID system paved the way for a depressed young man to opt for suicide during a vulnerable time in his life.
“People go through deep holes and it takes time for them to come out,” Marsilla told the Globe and Mail. “During that deep hole they can go through that (MAiD) application process.”
Phillips goes on to ask some very important questions. “Is this the system we want? Track 2 MAiD deaths are relatively rare. There were 732 in 2024, or 4.4 per cent of the 16,499 MAID deaths that year. But it still amounts to an average of two per day.”
Unfortunately, the law is scheduled to be expanded on March 17, 2027 to include mental illness as the sole underlying condition on Track 2 MAiD eligibility. The family is now advocating for the repeal of this provision.
As Phillips warns, “If that happens, there’s a real danger it will open the door for more depressed young people to end their lives — with the full sanction and support of the state.”
For more information on this case, visit Justice for Kiano on Facebook.
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