Ignoring warnings of a brutal slippery slope, Canada’s courts legalized physician-assisted suicide in 2016 for terminally ill people. That medical policy known as Medical Assistance in Dying, or MAID, was loosened in 2021 for people suffering from chronic pain and now, early next year, the mentally ill can visit a doctor and request help taking their life.
David Guretzki, of the Evangelical Fellowship of Canada, tells AFN a bill introduced in Parliament is attempting to end Canada’s slippery slope.
“I think at this point it's at second reading,” he says of the bill’s progress. “And if the private member’s bill did pass, then MAID for mental illness would at least be stopped.”
That effort in Parliament to put the brakes on more doctors helping more people kill themselves comes after a recent poll found only 28% support expanding MAID for the mentally ill. In the same poll, 64% support the original purpose of MAID which was people suffering with a terminal illness.
In a 2022 story, AFN reported that well-known Paralympian Christine Gauthier went public last year with her five-year fight for a wheelchair ramp for her home. Instead of granting her financial assistance, the Dept. of Veterans Affairs kept suggesting that Gauthier consider MAID instead.
After Gauthier came forward, five other cases of attempted coercion of veterans were revealed in the Dept. of Veterans Affairs. VA bureaucrats insisted their employees had violated department rules, a claim skeptical MP's said was highly unlikely.
In an eye-opening BBC story about MAID and the mentally ill, a physician who has participated in hundreds of assisted suicide cases said her country must reverse its plans for this next step.
“Making death too ready a solution disadvantages the most vulnerable people, and actually lets society off the hook," Dr. Madeline Li told the BBC. "I don't think death should be society's solution for its own failures."
According to the story, Li and others say Canada’s social safety net is failing to help some of the most vulnerable who depend on it and who feel like death is the best course of action.
