Canada’s healthcare system used to be a source of pride for my country. It was regarded as one of the world’s best examples of a publicly-funded insurance system, free at the point of use, ranking highly for accessibility, care, compassion and the treatment of major and minor illnesses.

No longer. In 2024, the influential Commonwealth Fund survey placed Canada in seventh place out of ten developed countries, with a particularly poor score for access to care. In January, the Canada-based CD Howe Institute gave the country’s healthcare system an even gloomier diagnosis: it was placed ninth out of 10 countries, with all provinces and territories falling below the international average for overall healthcare performance.

Now the world has begun to notice. Story after story has emerged of patients failing to receive the treatment they require. But none is quite so chilling as that of Jolene Van Alstine.

Van Alstine, who lives in Regina, Saskatchewan, was diagnosed with a rare form of parathyroid disease eight years ago. She has dealt with many health-related problems, including abdominal pain and extreme bone pain and fractures. “It has been horrific,” she told reporters on Nov 25. “Every day I get up and I’m sick to my stomach and I throw up and I throw up. And then it takes me hours to cool off. I overheat. We have to turn the temperature down to 14 degrees when I get up in the morning.”

Her condition is treatable – said to involve complex surgery to remove her remaining parathyroid gland. But no doctors in Saskatchewan are able to perform it. Her case could have been moved on to a surgeon in a different Canadian province, but she needed to get a referral from an endocrinologist – and none of them are reportedly taking new patients.

This is where the story takes a truly sinister turn. Van Alistine sought approval for MAID, or medical assistance in dying. Worse, she was actually approved for medically-assisted suicide. Her husband, Miles Sundeen, told Global News that “she doesn’t want to die. She’s expressed that”, but he understands her position “after watching her suffer for this length of time”.

Perhaps aware at how horrific this would look – a woman who says she cannot receive the treatment she requires instead being approved for assisted suicide – the MAID approval has since hit a roadblock. “Ironically that option,” according to Toronto Sun columnist Joe Warmington, “which looked like it could be utilised as early as Jan 7, 2026, has now stalled as a result of Saskatchewan MAID officials telling Jolene that her earlier approval has been pulled because of a bureaucratic error in which just one doctor signed off on it.” (Two independent Canadian medical practitioners are required for mandatory sign-off.)

Thankfully, Van Alstine appears to have a saviour. The American conservative commentator Glenn Beck caught wind of her situation and offered to pay for her surgery. “If there is any surgeon in America who can do this, I’ll pay for this patient to come down here for treatment,” he wrote on X earlier this month. “THIS is the reality of ‘compassionate’ progressive healthcare. Canada must END this insanity and Americans can NEVER let it spread here.” The radio host noted on additional posts that “we have surgeons who emailed us standing by to help her,” and he had been “in contact” with the couple. Although Van Alstine “does not have a passport to gain legal entry into the US... my team has been in touch with President Trump’s state department.”

The couple have been touched by Beck’s kindness. “I greatly appreciate it,” Van Alstine told Warmington. “It’s an amazing offer and I can’t believe someone would do that.” Sundeen, who was interviewed by Beck, told him, “I just wanted to say thank you so much. Apparently you’re a very popular guy. You’ve opened up a lot of doors.” He had Beck close to tears when he discussed his wife’s decision to seek out MAID.

Cynics have suggested that Beck is using Van Alstine’s illness as a means of attacking socialised medicine in Canada. He doesn’t need to. When a country blindly defends a public healthcare system that won’t do everything in its power to treat a sick patient, and that patient feels they must take the awful option of medically-assisted death, then the system itself is equally sick.

Michael Taube, a columnist with the National Post, Troy Media and Loonie Politics, was a speechwriter for former Canadian prime minister Stephen Harper