In the 30-page downloadable booklet, produced by Canadian Virtual Hospice, young readers learn the definition of key words such as “medical” and “assistance” in an easy-to-follow guide that explains Medical Assistance in Dying, or MAID. A doctor or a nurse practitioner, the guide says, uses medicines to stop a person’s body from working.
“When their body stops working,” the guide concludes, “the person dies.”
What is officially known as Medical Assistance in Dying has been legal in Canada since 2016, when the Canadian Supreme Court legalized it for the terminally ill. AFN reported in a Dec. 7 story what was reserved for the terminally ill to hasten death expanded in 2022 to welcome the disabled, the mentally ill, and even healthy people living with a chronic disease.
“These changes to the Criminal Code now allow MAID for eligible persons who wish to pursue a medically assisted death, whether their natural death is reasonably foreseeable or not,” an official Government of Canada document states. “The new law will reduce unnecessary suffering in Canada.”
If a government document describing “unnecessary suffering” is not chilling enough, the children’s booklet cleverly avoids mentioning that a person with Type 1 diabetes, or battling bipolar disorder, now qualifies for a lethal dose.
“Most people who ask for MAID have an illness that will cause their body to die no matter what,” the children’s guide dishonestly states.
CBC, Canada’s official news outlet, reported in a Dec. 1 story the Dept. of Veterans Affairs offered to help paraplegic and paralympian Christine Gauthier take her life after she repeatedly asked for financial assistance to obtain a home wheelchair ramp.
Gauthier, who had represented her country in the 2016 Paralympics, told a House of Commons committee she had been fighting for a wheelchair ramp for five years.
Forced to respond to the accusation, government bureaucrats came forward with five more cases of coercion but insisted the Veterans Affairs agents violated department rules and were punished.
Canadian children next target
What is even worse about a booklet written to help children understand life-ending adult decisions is that children are probably next. Canada’s parliament is currently studying expanding its government-approved euthanasia to include children, including newborns, who are suffering from “severe malformations” as defined by the Quebec College of Physicians. That group supports the expansion.
Rita Marker, an anti-euthanasia activist with Patient’s Rights Council, tells AFN children who read the booklet are assured the medicines put people to sleep and they die peacefully.
“This looks just like sleep,” she says. “And it’s much deeper than regular sleep, and it sounds so good.”
On page 9 of the booklet, the guide downplays the act of suicide. “They are not choosing to die instead of live,” the booklet states. “They are choosing what will make their body die…”
