O Canada
OUR NATIONAL ANTHEM (English version)
O Canada! Our home and native land!
True patriot love in all of us command.
With glowing hearts we see thee rise,
The True North strong and free
Canada practices euthanasia on the poor and disabled
By David Moscrop: Canada boasts one of the highest assisted dying rates in the world, supposedly allowing the terminally ill to die with dignity.
However, this suicide program increasingly resembles a dystopian substitution of care services, exchanging social welfare for euthanasia.
A man has died due to not being able to access a mattress. That is, in summary, the story of a quadriplegic man who in January decided to end his life through medically assisted death. Normand Meunier's story, as reported by the CBC, began with a visit to a Quebec hospital for a respiratory virus. Meunier later developed a painful bedsore after being left without access to a mattress that suited his needs. Thereafter, he applied for the Canadian Medical Assistance in Dying (MAiD) program.
As Rachel Watts writes in her report, Meunier spent ninety-five hours on a stretcher in the emergency room, just under four days. The bed sore he developed "eventually worsened to the point that bone and muscle were exposed and visible, making his recovery and his prognosis bleak." The man, who "did not want to be a burden," chose to die at home. An internal investigation into the matter is underway.
Organizations defending the disabled and other groups have been warning us for years that MAiD puts people in danger. We have been warned that the risk of people choosing death—because it is easier than fighting to survive in a system that impoverishes people, and disproportionately impoverishes the disabled—is real. Lack of investment in healthcare will push people to the brink, meaning some will choose to die rather than be a “burden” on their loved ones or society at large. They were right.
A failed welfare state
Canada now has one of the highest assisted dying rates in the world. As The Guardian reported in February, 4.1% of deaths in the country were assisted by doctors (and the number is growing, 30% between 2021 and 2022). In a survey of just over 13,100 people who opted for MAiD, a significant majority — 96.5 percent — chose to end their life in the face of terminal illness or imminent death, said Leyland Cecco, author of the report. But 463 chose him due to "a chronic illness."
The libertarian spirit partly contributed to the fact that few people batted an eye when MAiD was launched. Taking a broader view of rights, many of those unswayed by routine debauchery were convinced that concerns for bodily autonomy and compassion were sufficient reasons to adopt MAiD. However, in the absence of a robust welfare state, and in the face of structural poverty and discrimination, especially towards disabled people, there is no world in which the MAiD program can be understood as "progressive."
Indeed, last year, Jeremy Appel argued that MAiD was “starting to look like a dystopian end to the cost of providing social welfare”. Although he had initially agreed, he changed his mind about MAiD when he considered that the decisions people make are not strictly individual, but are shaped collectively and are sometimes "the product of social circumstances that are beyond their control." When we don't take care of each other, what do we end up with?
"I have realized," Appel wrote, "that euthanasia in Canada represents the cynical end of social provisioning with the brutal logic of late capitalism: we will deprive you of the financing you need to live a decent life (...) and if you don't You like it, why don't you commit suicide?
Bracketing the question of whether the program should even exist at all by allowing those suffering from mental illness to access a suicide program — which the government was willing to allow before rescheduling the law's controversial expansion to 2027 — is material. of the most terrifying science fiction. Instead, we can focus on the absurd and disturbing reality that Canada's underfunded and poorly managed care has led some to and through the door of assisted dying. As things stand, more will follow. It's grotesque.
In Canada's most populous province, Ontario, a disability recipient receives about $1,300 a month, a pittance that must cover food, shelter and other basic needs. Ontario Works, the province's social assistance program, currently pays a maximum of $733 a month. Meanwhile, the price of rent for a one-bedroom apartment is approaching $2,000 a month in many cities. In April in Toronto, a one-bedroom apartment averaged almost $2,500 a month.
Euthanized by the State - Freezing climate in winter
God keep our land glorious and free!
O Canada, we stand on guard for thee
In an article published in 2023 in the Canadian Medical Association Journal titled "What Drives Requests for MAiD?" [What drives MAiD applications?] James Downar and Susan MacDonald argue that
[W]espite fears that the availability of MAiD for terminally ill people would lead to requests for MAiD motivated by socioeconomic deprivation or poor availability of services (e.g. palliative care), the available evidence consistently indicates that MAiD it is more commonly received by people of high socioeconomic status and lower support needs, and by those with high palliative care involvement.
By their own admission, the data on this matter is imperfect. But even if they were, the fact that “most” patients who choose MAiD are better off socioeconomically is beside the point. Some don't have it, and those "some" are important. That includes a man living with Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis who, in 2019, chose medically assisted dying because he could not find adequate medical care that would also allow him to be with his son. It also includes a man whose application only listed "hearing loss," and whose brother says he was "basically sentenced to death." This story came a year after experts raised concerns that the country's MAiD regime violated the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
In 2022, Global News openly said what was not said: poverty pushes disabled Canadians to consider MAiD. Those “some” who are forced to undergo assisted dying due to poverty or the inability to access adequate care deserve to live with dignity and with the resources they need to live as they wish. They should never, ever feel pressure to choose to die because our social welfare institutions are starving and our healthcare system has been vandalized during years of austerity and mismanagement.
Given the way our economic and political institutions and elites create and perpetuate poverty in Canada, especially among disabled people, we should be especially sensitive to the implications of the country's MaiD regime for those who are often ignored when warned. of the dangers of the law.
The fact that we collectively have the wealth, means and resources to address endemic poverty and provide adequate care to all but choose not to do so while the State euthanizes countless poor and disabled people is a desecration. .
For whom the bell doesn't toll
In an article published in February in the Globe and Mail, University of Toronto law professor Trudo Lemmens wrote: "The results of promoting access to death as a benefit and trivializing death as a harm against the that must be protected in our MAiD regime are increasingly clear. Criticizing MAiD's second track, which allows physician-assisted dying for those who do not face "a reasonably foreseeable death," Lemmens notes that within two years of its adoption, "'track two' MAiD providers "They had already ended the lives of nearly seven hundred disabled people, most of whom probably had years to live."
Raising concerns about the extension of MAiD to cover mental illnesses, Lemmens added: “There are growing concerns that inadequate mental health and social care, and the failure to provide housing support, will push people to apply for MAiD," and noted that "adding mental illness as a basis for MAiD will only increase the number of people exposed to higher risks of premature death."
In 2021, Gabrielle Peters warned in Maclean's that expanding MAiD to cover those not facing an immediately foreseeable death was "dangerous, disturbing and deeply wrong." She explained the various ways in which a broader MAiD law could lead to people choosing to die in the face of austerity, adding an intersectional lens that is often missing from our discussions and debates on the topic.
He warned that we were not taking into account "how poverty and racism intersect with disability to create greater risk of harm, more prejudice and institutional barriers, additional layers of marginalization and dehumanization, and fewer resources to address either." they". And here we are. We should have listened more carefully.
While MAiD may be defensible as a means for individuals to exercise personal choice about how to live and how to die when faced with illness and pain, it is clearly indefensible when state-induced austerity and mismanagement lead to people to choose to end their lives that have been made unnecessarily miserable. In short, we are killing people for being poor and disabled, which is horrifying.
So it is up to MAiD advocates to show how such deaths can be prevented, just as it is up to policymakers to build or rebuild institutions that ensure that no one ever chooses to end their life for lack of resources or support, which we could provide in abundance if we so choose.
