Alicia Duncan on Coercion, Coverups & Canada's Medical Assistance in Dying Program (Part 2)

In Part 2 with Alicia Duncan, we get into the really juicy stuff: the loaded language, the euphemisms, and the whole “don’t say the scary word or everyone clutch their pearls” universe around MAID. Alicia breaks down how terms like autonomy, dignity, and assisted dying get used as PR glitter, while the actual lived experience can look a lot more like coercion, gaslighting, and a bureaucratic escape room with no exit.

She also digs into the bigger system questions: who benefits, what safeguards are missing, why assessors aren’t held to a higher standard, and how financial and institutional incentives can shape decisions about life and death. Plus: the autopsy findings, the physiological effects of the drugs used, the push to expand MAID to people with mental illness and even mature minors, and why Alicia is on a mission to keep asking the annoying-but-necessary questions.

Watch Alicia’s episode on CBC’s The Fifth Estate on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=plinQAHZRvk

Also be sure to pick up Alicia’s book, The Other Side of the Straitjacket, when it drops September 1st, and follow her on X, Instagram, or at aliciaduncan.com.

Trigger warning: This episode contains frank discussion of suicide, medically assisted death/euthanasia, PTSD, mental illness, eating disorders, psychiatric hospitalization, coercion, gaslighting, institutional failure, and possible criminal negligence.

Also…let it be known that:

The views and opinions expressed on A Little Bit Culty do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the podcast. Any content provided by our guests, bloggers, sponsors or authors are of their opinion and are not intended to malign any religion, group, club, organization, business, individual, anyone or anything. Nobody’s mad at you, just don’t be a culty fuckwad.

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CREDITS:

Executive Producers: Sarah Edmondson & Anthony Ames

Production Partner: Citizens of Sound

Co-Creator: Jess Tardy

Audio production: Will Retherford

Production Coordinator: Lesli Dinsmore

Writer: Sandra Nomoto

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Theme Song: “Cultivated” by Jon Bryant co-written with Nygel Asselin