Case reference: MAID-ON-2018-RNRW · London, Ontario · MAID raised by others; not requested · Recorded by the register as a MAID victim
Who he is
Roger Foley lives with cerebellar ataxia, a disease that attacks the brain and muscles. He was 49 in 2024. For years he has lived at Victoria Hospital in London, Ontario, because he needs round-the-clock care and says he could not get safe care at home.
He has been clear about what he wants. “I don’t want to give up my life,” he told the New York Post.
What happened
Foley wanted self-directed home care, which he calls “assisted life.” According to reporting summarized on Wikipedia, he says he was given two options: be discharged to an agency that had previously failed to care for him properly, or apply for MAID. In 2018 he released audio recordings, reported by CTV News, of hospital staff raising assisted death with him while he was asking for home care.
Photo: National Post (source)
He says he was told he would be charged $1,800 a day to stay in hospital, and that he fell deeply into debt. “They asked if I wanted an assisted death. I don’t,” he told the Post. “Nurses here told me that I should end my life.”
Foley sued the hospital and governments, alleging Charter violations. In 2023 the Ontario Superior Court struck his claim for failing to plead material facts, and in September 2024 it dismissed the action after he did not pay more than $100,000 in court-ordered costs. Reports say the Ontario Court of Appeal gave him more time in 2026 to challenge the dismissal.
Why they were pushed toward MAID
In Foley’s account, staff pushed him toward MAID when he could not get the disability support he needed to live at home. He says the pressure came together with the threat of daily hospital charges he could not pay. His recordings capture staff raising assisted death during those conversations. The courts have not ruled on the substance of his claims, because the case ended on procedural grounds, and the hospital has not been found at fault. London Health Sciences Centre declined to comment, citing patient confidentiality and the ongoing legal proceedings.
In their own words
“I’ve been pressured to do an assisted suicide,” Foley told the New York Post in 2024.
In a video for the Dying to Meet You Project, he said he has been offered euthanasia “multiple times,” and described the effect: “It’s completely traumatized me. It’s an overlying option. When I say I am suicidal, I am met with, ‘Well, the hospital has a program to help you with that if you want to end your life.’”
“There is not going to be a second within the rest of my life when I will not have flashbacks to it, to the devaluing of me and all that I am … I don’t want to give up my life.”
What this case shows
Roger Foley asked to be supported to live, and says he was offered help to die. His case has become one of the best-known examples of how MAID can show up in hospital when home care is refused and costs pile up. It raises a question the law has not answered: how a patient can truly choose freely when the option to live is the one being withheld.
Sources
- CTV News: Chronically ill man releases audio of hospital staff offering assisted death
- New York Post: Canadian doctors accused of pushing medically assisted death on patients: ‘They make you feel less than human’
- National Post: Denied ‘assisted life,’ chronically-ill Ontario man is offered death instead: lawsuit
- Ontario Superior Court (via MiniCounsel): Foley v. Victoria London Health Sciences Centre, 2024 ONSC 4978
- Wikipedia: Euthanasia and assisted suicide in Canada
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