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Death comes for all of us. There is no immortality option.

The best we can hope for is to die with dignity, hopefully later rather than sooner, and preferably with neither pain nor drama.

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For some of us, though, there may come a point when death is the best option we have left.

That’s a sad discovery, and one many will never accept. But thousands of Canadians make this choice every year.

About about 7,000 Canadians have taken advantage of medical assistance in dying (MAID) since it became legal in 2016.

In 2015, the Supreme Court of Canada ruled prohibitions against MAID violated the Charter rights of Canadians who suffered “intolerably” from an “irremediable” medical condition.

The next year, Parliament changed the law to protect this right for most, but not all, Canadians.

The new law expressly denies this right to Canadians with mental illness. No doubt, some hoped this exclusion would save lives. It hasn’t.