Organ donation is not a requirement to receive MAID in Canada

"In order to have MAID you have to say yes to organ donation... why is that?" asks Kelsie Sheren on a November 30, 2025 episode of the "Blendr Report" podcast on YouTube.

Sheren -- a military veteran with over 18,000 YouTube subscribers who regularly posts in opposition to MAID -- goes on to relay unverified, secondhand accounts of healthcare workers' training about the procedure.

Blendr News -- which has previously amplified misleading claims fact-checked by AFP -- shared the clip to its Instagram, Facebook, TikTok and X accounts. It then spread across platforms, with many posts republishing the footage.

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Screenshot of an Instagram post taken December 4, 2025

First legalized in 2016, MAID was originally only available to those experiencing "grievous and irremediable" suffering and whose death was "reasonably foreseeable," but it was expanded in 2021 to include people whose deaths were not so imminent (archived here).

While federal law calls for the informed consent of the recipient, some advocates argue that the procedure is too easily accessible to vulnerable individuals as an alternative to social assistance or robust healthcare.

Alongside this debate, misleading claims about the procedure have circulated online. Allegations about assisted death driving an organ-harvesting operation in Canada have also repeatedly cropped up.

But the claim that organ donation is a requirement to receive MAID is baseless, experts said.

"They are absolutely separate processes," Matthew Weiss, the medical director of organ donation at Transplant Québec, the francophone province's transplantation coordinator, told AFP in a December 9, 2025 interview (archived here). 

Separate consent

Healthcare in Canada is managed by the provinces, which each have their own guidelines governing organ donation. Weiss said that in his province, consent for organ donation is only sought after assisted death is formally approved.

Eric Lun, executive director of the British Columbian analogue BC Transplant, said organ donation in his province is also only considered after a person has applied for and been approved for MAID (archived here).

"Individuals may withdraw consent for organ donation at any time," he said in an email on December 4.

The federal agency Health Canada also refuted claims of an organ-donation requirement as "disinformation" in a December 4 email.

Low eligibility

The provinces also have eligibility requirements for potential organ donors.

For example, BC Transplant excludes people with metastatic cancer and those over 80 years of age from donating organs after dying via MAID (archived here).

In Alberta, cancer "usually" excludes someone from being a donor, according to province's health ministry website (archived here).

Health Canada reported that over 60 percent of MAID recipients in 2024 had cancer (archived here). Their median age was 77.9 years old.

"In most cases, patients seeking MAID are not ultimately eligible to be an organ donor," said Kim Wiebe, a MAID assessor and provider based in Manitoba, in a December 4 statement to AFP (archived here).

Some MAID recipients also choose to undergo the procedure at home, which would typically preclude them from organ donation (archived here).

Wiebe, who serves as a consultant on organ donation after MAID to Canadian Blood Services, said that of 16,499 people in Canada who received MAID in 2024, only 63 donated their organs (archived here). The Canadian Institute for Health Information similarly counted just 62 Canadian residents who donated organs after MAID in 2024, out of 894 total deceased donors (archived here).

At least one MAID recipient's heart was transplanted to someone in the United States, according to local media.

A 2021 review of countries that allow the life-ending procedure found that Canada was performing the most organ transplants from MAID donors (archived here).

In February 2026, Canada's Parliament is scheduled to review the country's preparedness to open up MAID to those suffering solely from mental illness, after the change was previously postponed.

Read more of AFP's reporting on misinformation in Canada here.