The MAiD Great Replacement Theory Goes Mainstream

A conspiracy theory linking medical assistance in dying, white Canadians,1 and immigration has moved from the fringes of online discussion to one of the world’s largest political platforms2.

In a recent episode of The Tucker Carlson Show, Kelsi Sheren and Tucker Carlson explicitly connected the fact that 96% of MAiD recipients are white with immigration and demographic replacement.

We have not cherry-picked a handful of random, off-the-cuff remarks from a lengthy interview and construct a racial narrative around them. The idea that MAiD is disproportionately targeting white people was prominent enough that Carlson used it both to promote the interview in a YouTube Short and in the title of the episode itself.

That racial framing is there before either Carlson or Sheren say a word. Carlson titled the episode “Exposing the State-Sponsored Death Cult Disguised as Healthcare & Preying on Whites and the Weak.” Of all the claims made during their lengthy conversation, the title singles out the idea that MAiD is “preying on Whites.” That choice of emphasis becomes particularly important as Carlson and Sheren go on to discuss declining white birth rates, immigration, “legacy Canadians,” and the idea that those white people are being replaced.

Here is a sample of what they said:

“Demographic replacement in Canada has been so brisk…the overwhelming majority of the people killed—over 95% of the Canadians killed by the Canadian government—have been white, legacy Canadians.”
— Tucker Carlson (31:13)

“That’s why we’re importing everyone to replace us, because 96% of the people that are being murdered by their doctors are white.”
— Kelsi Sheren (1:41:54)

“96% of the people the state kills are white, but that’s not genocide?” — Tucker Carlson (1:42:29)

Interestingly, viewers who only watched Tucker Carlson’s promotional video on YouTube would not have heard the statements that make the underlying argument most explicit. The clip highlighted concerns about the percentage of Canadians receiving MAiD being white, but did not include the statements that “we’re importing everyone to replace us” and references to “demographic replacement” and “legacy Canadians.”

That additional context is important. Without it, the discussion can appear to be little more than a question about demographic statistics. Once the omitted portions are included, however, the apparent intent becomes hard to miss. It is no longer simply that a high proportion of MAiD recipients are white. It becomes a claim that white Canadians are being systematically targeted and eliminated, with immigration being used to replace them. That is a Great Replacement theory argument.

We’ll come back to the Great Replacement theory in a moment. But first, it’s worth seeing the difference for yourself. Here’s Carlson’s YouTube short, followed by our version that restores several of the more explicit statements that Carlson left out, with some additional context from MS NOW and Hatewatch.

Tucker Carlson’s Promotional Clip

Our Edited Version

Note: our version interpolates extracts from MS Now and Hatewatch which are not a part of the Tucker Carlson promotional video above, and do not appear in the Tucker Carlson episode. The source of each clip can be found at the bottom left of the video. Links will also be provided in the footnotes.3

Below is a link the the complete episode of the Tucker Carlson show. We are providing this so that the statements we are discussing can be considered by our readers in their full context. We encourage you to watch the entire episode.

Great Replacement is a far-right conspiracy theory, widely described as white-nationalist and racist, alleging that historically white-majority societies are being deliberately transformed through non-white immigration and demographic growth. It overlaps with the broader “white genocide” theory, which claims that immigration, abortion, declining white fertility and government or cultural policies are being used to reduce the number and influence of white people.4

For those inclined to subscribe to this theory, the finding that 96% of Canadian MAiD recipients identify as white can easily be seen as evidence that Canada’s MAiD program’s goal is to eliminate white Canadians while replacing them through mass immigration.

That appears to be the argument Carlson and Sheren are making.

We cannot know what Carlson or Sheren privately believes, and we are not assigning them racist or white-nationalist ideology or intent. We can, however, assess the argument they are presenting. Whatever they intended, describing MAiD as the government killing white “legacy Canadians” while immigration is being used to “replace us” is a Great Replacement argument.

For about the last eighteen months, we have been watching this conspiracy theory take shape in Anti-MAiD circles.

The statistic at its centre first appeared in Health Canada’s Fifth Annual Report on MAiD, covering 2023, when 95.8% of MAiD recipients who answered the racial-identity question identified as Caucasian or white.5 The Sixth Annual Report, covering 2024, reported a nearly identical figure of 95.6%.6

Soon after the 2023 report was released in December 2024, we noticed comments beginning to appear in blogs, news articles, YouTube videos, and internet posts pointing to that statistic and explicitly suggesting that a white “genocide” was underway.

In April 2026, when we presented at the CAMAP National MAiD Conference in Montreal, we mentioned that this claim was beginning to circulate more frequently. At that time, it was still mainly confined to comment sections and fringe online discussions. But since then, it has begun appearing in more prominent anti-MAiD media.

The most prominent person we found repeatedly drawing attention to the statistic is Kelsi Sheren. On May 29, 2025, she asked on her YouTube channel:

“Why is 96% of it white people from Canada using it?” (15:25) 7

Immediately before that, she said:

“This is a very obvious slow-drip campaign to get rid of Canadians, the hard-earning, taxpaying, born-and-raised in Canada.” (15:16)

Sheren initially offered a cultural explanation, saying that immigrants “treat their people differently” and “we don’t put them in a nursing home.” But the broader framing already suggested that “born-and-raised” Canadians—what Carlson later described as “legacy Canadians”—were the ones being eliminated, shifting the explanation from differences in cultural norms, family practices and individual choice towards the idea of a deliberate campaign.

Sheren has repeatedly described MAiD as a form of eugenics8, and her comments about white Canadians are not limited to her interview with Carlson. In January 2026, she said:

“This new narrative that we should be killing everyone, especially white people in Canada, because what? We should have some white guilt? I’m over it and I’m done with it.” (28:24)

Around that same time, Sheren was also making inflammatory comments about immigration and immigrants, including people arriving from India and Muslim-majority countries. She called Indian international students “invaders on student visas” (1:00:15), complains that Canada now “looks” and “smells” like Afghanistan (21:37), and approvingly repeated statements telling Indian immigrants to:

“stop shitting on our beaches”, (1:02:44) and

“Speak English. If you come here, it’s because you left that shithole. Don’t bring it with you.” (1:02:55)9

Until recently, most of the statements we were seeing about white Canadians having MAiD and statements about immigration were generally being expressed separately. We were concerned, however, that the two narratives would eventually be joined into an explicit claim that white Canadians were being killed while non-white immigrants were being brought in to replace them.

That appears to have happened.

Terms and phrases such as “born-and-raised Canadians,” “legacy Canadians,” “heritage Canadians” and “the people who built Canada” can have an ordinary, non-racial meaning. They could possibly refer to citizenship, ancestry, family history, or length of residence. But in political discussions about demographic replacement, these terms are frequently used to distinguish white or European-descended Canadians from more recent—predominantly non-white—immigrants.10

Whether every use is an intentional racial dog whistle is impossible to know, and largely irrelevant. Racially coded language does not require everyone who hears or repeats it to recognize or intend the racial meaning it can carry.11 Such language works precisely because it can have an ordinary surface meaning while communicating something more specific to an audience already familiar with the underlying narrative.

The context therefore matters. When “legacy Canadians” are explicitly identified as the white people supposedly being killed, while immigrants are identified as the population being imported to replace “us,” the racial identity distinction is no longer especially subtle.

Beyond its racial implications, the demographic argument isn’t even statistically accurate.

Yes, 95.6% of MAiD recipients who answered the racial-identity question in 2024 identified as Caucasian or white. But Canada is not, as Carlson stated, “a little over half white.”

Statistics Canada notes that close to 70% of the population report being white. More importantly, MAiD recipients are not representative of Canada as a whole. They are overwhelmingly older Canadian residents approaching the end of life.

According to the Third Annual Report on MAiD:12

• The average age of MAiD recipients was 76.3 years.

• 95% of MAiD recipients were over the age of 55.

• 83% of MAiD recipients were over the age of 65.

• more than half were at least 75 years old.

MAiD recipients are almost exclusively over the age of 55.

According to the most recent Census:

• approximately 67% of Canada’s total population identified as white.

• approximately 80% of Canadians over 55 identified as white.

• approximately 83% of Canadians over 65 identified as white.

Older Canadians are considerably more likely than younger Canadians to identify as white.

Older Canadians are significantly more likely to identify as white, and older Canadians are dramatically more likely to have MAiD than their younger cohorts. Any meaningful racial identity comparison must therefore be made against the population from which MAiD recipients are actually drawn, not against Canadians of all ages.

By comparing MAiD recipients with Canada’s entire population, Carlson and Sheren create the appearance of a much larger racial identity disparity than the relevant demographic comparison supports.

The remaining difference between the racial identity composition of older Canadians and that of MAiD recipients may warrant further investigation. But it is nowhere near the demographic chasm Carlson presents, and it still provides no evidence of a conspiracy to reduce or replace the white population.13

Ironically, Sheren’s original suggestion that cultural differences may affect attitudes toward MAiD is substantially more plausible than the replacement conspiracy she later advanced.

For example, religious affiliation and personal religiosity are two factors that may explain some of this difference, particularly in the context of recent immigration trends. Canadians born outside Canada are somewhat more likely than those born in Canada to report a religious affiliation, and are considerably more likely to participate in private religious activities at least weekly.14 This may be relevant to MAiD uptake, given the relationship between religious belief and attitudes toward assisted dying.15

That does not establish that religion explains the difference. Other possible factors might include age, income, education, family involvement, trust in health institutions, awareness of MAiD, willingness to request it, willingness to disclose racial identity on a government form, and yes, some influence from cultural attitudes toward MAiD as an end-of-life care option.

The limited information currently available cannot tell us how much each of these factors contributes to the difference, if at all. But that uncertainty is precisely the point.

A (relatively small) difference is not proof of the deliberate targeting of a particular racial group. A correlation is not evidence of the government’s intent. And a statistic does not become evidence of white replacement simply because it can be inserted into an existing conspiracy theory.

That Carlson and Sheren choose—knowingly or not—to connect MAiD with a Great Replacement framing tells us more about them than anything about Canada’s MAiD statistics.

There are legitimate questions to ask about whether different racial, cultural and religious communities have equal knowledge of and access to end-of-life options, including MAiD and palliative care.16 Those questions should continue to be investigated thoughtfully and openly.

Carlson and Sheren did something very different.

They reported an inaccurate demographic statistic, compared it with the wrong population, and placed it inside a narrative in which white Canadians are being killed while non-white immigrants are being imported to replace them.

Whatever they intended, that is the core logic of the Great Replacement conspiracy theory. And its arrival in the mainstream MAiD debate should concern everyone—supporters and opponents of assisted dying alike.

People can oppose MAiD on ethical, religious, medical, or practical grounds. Those disagreements belong in a civil debate. But recasting MAiD as part of a deliberate campaign to eliminate white Canadians is something else entirely. It racializes a complex public-policy issue, turns immigrants into supposed beneficiaries of a plot against “legacy Canadians,” and replaces evidence with a conspiracy theory that has repeatedly fuelled hatred and violence.17 This is not simply another argument against MAiD. It is false, inflammatory and dangerous—and it should be rejected just as firmly by principled opponents of assisted dying as by MAiD supporters.

Thank you,

Paul and Kim