Couple say Canada offered medically assisted death before cancer treatment, prompting their return to the United States

Kristin Logan and Donovan James say they moved to Canada with their sights set on the financial and medical benefits of publicly funded healthcare. But, they say, they were offered information about medical assistance in dying (MAID) before cancer treatment began, and after that experience they returned to the United States.

James told Fox News Digital that Canada has been slowly sliding into a dystopian situation and that the way the MAID system has been expanded is frightening. It was never supposed to be used this way, to be offered so easily and so upfront when a person gets sick, he said, calling it evil.

Logan said she received information about ways to end her life and what the end of her life would look like before she had even gotten an oncology appointment. It was the most heartbreaking experience, she said — to basically be set up to die, and to have to take her life into her own hands and leave the country if she wanted to live.

Logan is a U.S. Air Force veteran who has stage four ovarian cancer. James is a Canadian citizen living in the United States with a green card. The couple say they moved to Canada to get ahead of potential financial difficulty in a future medical crisis and avoid ever going bankrupt — a plan that crashed into reality after Kristin's illness.

Logan said she was first diagnosed in September 2023 and left Canada later that month to get initial treatment. She later had a bowel obstruction in March 2024 and had to leave the country again, then returned in April 2024, before the cancer returned in December 2024. The couple decided to leave Canada in January 2025 and officially moved back to the United States in May of that year.

Health Canada describes MAID as a health service that allows eligible people to receive help from a medical practitioner in ending their life. According to Kristin and Donovan, MAID was the best initial solution Canada offered her upon her diagnosis.

The Atlantic has reported that MAID now accounts for about one in 20 deaths in Canada, surpassing countries where assisted dying has been legal for far longer, with some raising concerns the program has become too expansive. James said providers should be focusing on treating people and helping people live, but instead have expanded the system as a kind offer because they pretty much assume the patient is going to die.

James said Canadian medical providers told the family there were no plans to operate on her, that a hospital helicopter was unavailable for a transfer to Vancouver, and that a doctor advised Logan to leave the country if she had the means.

The family ultimately traveled to the United States for treatment. James said Kristin was deteriorating really fast, and that they had to take her off the machines at the hospital and risk everything to put her in a car, drive all the way down Vancouver Island, sail across on a ferry and continue over the border back into Seattle to get her immediate emergency surgery. The surgeon said that had she waited another day, she would have gone septic and died in Canada, he said.

Logan said she was only 43 years old when she was given the diagnosis, and that she was very angry she had been chasing the disease for nine months and had been stymied at just about every turn by the healthcare system in Canada.

James said Americans do not get enough Canadian news to know how much Canadian healthcare has declined over the last couple of decades. It has always had this problem, he said, but it is now much worse and dystopian with the MAID program they have introduced — and it was never supposed to be used this way.

British Columbia has announced an expansion of services for women with gynecological cancer. According to the Fraser Institute's 2025 report, the reported median wait time for gynecology was 25 weeks from referral by a general practitioner to consultation with a specialist, followed by 15.6 weeks from specialist consultation to treatment.

Health Canada, the lead federal department for the MAID program, did not immediately respond to Fox Digital's request for comment.