Police association hosts assisted suicide seminar for RCMP veterans

A national police association is facing intense backlash after it invited an advocate to “educate” RCMP veterans on assisted suicide options.

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A national police association is facing intense backlash after it invited an advocate to “educate” RCMP veterans on assisted suicide options.

A Canadian war veteran, podcaster, andlongtime advocate for veterans’ mental health, Kelsi Sheren, put the Nova Scotia branch of the RCMP Veterans Association on blast after a 32-year police veteran leaked an email. The email advertised an assisted suicide talk to be hosted in an Anglican Church.

The email, sent out Thursday, was leaked to Sheren and published in a Substack article she authored. It invites members to a free, open-to-the-public presentation that “may interest many” and discusses the government’s “Medical Assistance in Dying” (MAiD) program. The speaker is Dr. Gordon Gubitz, the clinical lead for Nova Scotia Health’s assisted suicide program.

Gubitz also sits on the board for the Canadian Association of MAiD Assessors and Providers (CAMAP), the organization that “developed the MAiD curriculum for clinicians,” which frames government-approved suicide as a “compassionate response to suffering” and a “therapeutic option.”

Sheren said Gubitz was not a “neutral independent medical educator” but a “clinical gatekeeper for MAiD” and an “ideological engine behind national MAiD training.”

“Nova Scotia RCMP veterans invited a man whose job is to facilitate, provide and promote nothing but death, and whose organization teaches clinicians how to introduce MAiD (assisted SUICIDE) to patients who didn’t ask for it, bring it up or want it in their life,” the article reads. “Let me explain something: If you’re a veteran dealing with post-traumatic stress disorder, chronic pain, traumatic brain Injury, disability, or bureaucracy-induced despair, this isn’t ‘education.’ This is targeted psychological pressure. Coercion, CAMAP and Dying with Dignity’s claim to fame.”

CAMAP did not respond for for comment but Dying with Dignity told True North that they are not affiliated with the presentation but feel the event was important.”

Please see the statement below from Helen Long, CEO, Dying With Dignity Canada

“We believe it is important for people across Canada to be aware of all their end-of-life options, including MAiD. Canada has strict MAiD eligibility and proper safeguards in place, Dying With Dignity Canada said in an email. The event being shared is a free public event intended to share information to those who choose to attend.”

The group said that “suggesting that an educational event is designed to target or coerce a specific audience is, at best, inaccurate and, at worst, irresponsible,” as no one is “forced” into assisted suicide. Sheren called the email an invitation to be groomed and coerced into accepting death as a service.

“This was an information session to ‘educate’ veterans whose rates of PTSD and suicidality were already sky high. How can they apply or use MAiD,” she said. “Veterans, on the daily are dealing with chronic pain, combat trauma, moral injury, sanctuary trauma, disability, suicidality, lack of services, financial strain, bureaucratic obstruction and the government doesn’t just know know it, it caused it and it supports it and so do the MAID, pro-death cult architects.”

“This guy is literally a death pusher and peddler of the dark. Think of him as the drug dealer for death. They didn’t invite a trauma specialist or a palliative expert. They didn’t invite a police mental-health advocate, a mental health expert, a Doctor who looks at psychedelic-assisted therapy,” Sheren wrote. “They didn’t invite hope. They only invited death.”

The veteran who leaked the email told Sheren he was “deeply disturbed” by the “shocking email,” as he served as a police association director for 20 years. He identified himself as a Christian who retired from the RCMP in 2019 after 32 years of service on the West Coast.

The event is planned at Saint John the Evangelist Church Parish in Dartmouth, Nova Scotia, on Saturday from 1:30 to 3:00 pm, and will include a question-and-answer period.

In her article, Sheren criticized the veterans association for hosting the event in a church, calling the move “strategic psychological laundering” and an attempt to “sanitize” the state-organized suicide program.

During a House of Commons committee on veterans’ mental health at the end of last month, Gauthier testified that she’s still awaiting government aid to make her life more accessible.

In a post on X, Sheren encouraged the public to attend the event and ask, “Why is it acceptable to be dangling a carrot in front of veterans who already are struggling with mental health…How is this supposed to help, other than push people to self-select and kill themselves?”

After posting the article, Sheren released another message she received from someone identifying as a 20-year RCMP veteran who retired due to a cancer diagnosis. The individual feared that the assisted suicide seminars were targeting people like them to cut veteran budget costs.

The Liberals cut $4.23 billion from the Veterans Affairs budget in Prime Minister Mark Carney’s 2025 federal budget. They only announced that a portion of the “savings” would come from paying “fair market price” for medical cannabis for veterans, but did not specify the source of the other cuts.

The RCMP Veterans Association, Nova Scotia Branch, did not respond to True North’s requests for comment.

Sheren noted that she has heard from many veterans who say they are being offered government-assisted suicide. Notably, veteran Christine Gauthier was offered death as an option when she asked for government funding to install a wheelchair ramp at her home, which she requires due to service-related injuries.