Since Canada legalized assisted suicide, euthanasia has become one of the leading causes of death in the country. What started as an option of last resort for those suffering from severe terminal illnesses is now being pushed as an option for people dealing with mental health challenges — and even giving the choice of death to “mature minors.”

But not every province is comfortable with where the federal Liberal government is taking its Medical Assistance in Dying (MAID) program.

On Wednesday's episode of The Ezra Levant Show, guest host Sheila Gunn Reid examined legislative changes Alberta is enacting to ensure there are strong safeguards around MAID.

“The biggest change is that Alberta would limit assisted suicide to what's known as Track 1 MAID,” she explained, referring to the cases involving individuals where death is a reasonably foreseeable outcome.

“In practice, the legislation defines that as a situation where death is likely within roughly 12 months,” Sheila said, describing it as a “huge and significant shift from our current genocidal federal law.”

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Track 2 MAID, she said, was introduced by Ottawa for those whose natural death “is not foreseeable — in other words, people no longer have to be dying to get access to the state to kill them. They can be chronically ill, disabled or living with long-term suffering the system considers intolerable.”

Alberta's new legislation outlaws MAID for cases where mental illness is the sole underlying condition. “That line matters,” Sheila said, given the federal government's push to expand the program.

Millions of Canadians struggle from mental health issues — severe anxiety, depression or PTSD, for example — but millions recover from these difficulties, too.

The new bill will also restrict access to those under the age of 18 and those who lack the capacity to make their own health-care decisions. Advance requests, filed years earlier, will also be barred, along with health-care professionals recommending patients receive the fatal procedures out of province.

“There's no getting around the legislation in Alberta,” Sheila said.

“Should the priority be expanding access to assisted suicide?” she asked, or should it be “finding better ways to help people live through illness, disability, hardship and loneliness?”

These questions, Sheila said, are something Canada “may have to confront sooner rather than later.”