Kristin Logan, a US Air Force veteran with stage four ovarian cancer, and her husband Donovan James say Canada’s public health system offered her medically assisted death before she had even gotten an oncology appointment, pushing the family to flee back to the United States for care.
“It was the most heartbreaking experience, to basically be set up to die. And if I wanted to live, I had to take my life into my own hands and leave the country,” Logan told Fox News Digital. “It’s pretty dystopian to think about now, to get information about ways that I can end my life and what the end of my life looks like before I’d even gotten an oncology appointment.”
James, a Canadian citizen who holds a US green card, put it more bluntly.
“Canada has been slowly sliding into an entire dystopian situation. The way they’ve expanded the MAID system is frightening. It was never supposed to be used this way, to be offered so easily and so upfront when a person gets sick. I think it’s evil,” James said.
The couple had moved to Canada hoping to avoid “ever going bankrupt” if a medical crisis hit. Logan was diagnosed in September 2023 and left Canada that same month for initial treatment. She suffered a bowel obstruction in March 2024, left the country again, returned in April 2024, and then the cancer came back in December 2024. The family decided to leave Canada for good in January 2025 and resettled in the United States by May.
MAID — Canada’s medical assistance in dying program — is described by Health Canada as “a health service that allows eligible people to receive help from a medical practitioner in ending their life.” According to Logan and James, it was the first option presented to her after diagnosis. The Atlantic has reported MAID now accounts for roughly one in 20 deaths in Canada, a rate that has drawn scrutiny over how far the program has expanded.
“They should be focusing on treating people and helping people live, but instead they’ve expanded the system as a kind offer because they pretty much assume you’re going to die,” James said.
A Desperate Border Crossing
When Logan’s second bowel obstruction hit, James said Canadian providers told the family there were “no plan[s] to operate on her,” a hospital helicopter to Vancouver wasn’t available, and a doctor advised Logan to “leave the country” if she had the means to do so.
With Logan deteriorating, the family made a last-resort run for the US border.
“Kristin was deteriorating really fast… Ultimately, we had to pull the plug and take her off the machines at the hospital and risk everything to put her in the car, drive all the way down Vancouver Island, sail across the ocean straight on a ferry, continue down over the border back into Seattle to get her immediate emergency surgery,” James said.
“The surgeon said had she waited another day, she would have gone septic and died in Canada,” he added.
Logan, who was 43 at diagnosis, said the ordeal left her furious at a system that stalled her for nine months. “It made me very angry that I had been chasing this disease for nine months and had been stymied at just about every turn by the health care system in Canada,” she said.
“Americans don’t get enough Canadian news to know just how much Canadian health care has declined over the last couple [of] decades. It’s always had this problem, but now it’s just so much more worse and dystopian with this M.A.I.D. program that they’ve introduced — and it was never supposed to be used this way,” James said.
Wait Times in British Columbia
British Columbia has announced an expansion of services for women with gynecological cancer. Still, the Fraser Institute’s 2025 report found the median wait time for gynecology care was 25 weeks from a general practitioner’s referral to a specialist consultation, followed by another 15.6 weeks from that consultation to actual treatment.
Health Canada did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
