National Post (National Edition)
DISABILITY ADVOCATES PAN ASSISTED-DYING CHANGES
OTTAWA • Disability advocates are raising concerns over the Liberal government’s new assisted dying law, saying it lacks safeguards that would protect Canada’s most vulnerable people.
In the House of Commons justice committee on Tuesday, one witness described the “norm-shattering legislation” that would allow patients with non-terminal illnesses to be euthanized.
Their comments come as Parliament studies Bill C-7, which updates the Liberal government’s medical assistance in dying (MAID) regime, introduced in 2016. The new legislation removes a provision that the natural death of a patient must be “reasonably foreseeable,” in response to a Quebec Superior Court decision in 2019 that the original law unconstitutionally restricted assisted death to terminally ill patients.
But disability advocates say the new law could ultimately lead disabled people in particular to seek euthanasia even in cases where the patient might recover to full health, and called on Ottawa to make adjustments to the proposed bill.
Dr. Heidi Janz, committee chair at the Council of Canadians with Disabilities, expressed her “alarm at the breakneck speed at which this committee is operating,” and called on members to extend public consultations on the legislation.
Taylor Hyatt, who sits on the same committee as Janz and lives with cerebral palsy, described her own personal experience with assisted dying after her long fight with a bad bout of pneumonia.
Hyatt said her doctor at one point suggested the possibility of medically assisted death, an experience that she worries will be replicated many times over if Bill C-7 passes. She eventually recovered from her illness, and says today that medical professionals overlooked the chances that Hyatt, who was then in her 20s, would return to health.
“All the doctor seemed to see, though, was a disabled woman alone, sick, tired and probably tired of living,” she said.
Assisted dying has for years been a contentious issue in Canada and elsewhere, as policy-makers seek to strike a balance between protecting patients and giving them their right to decide when faced with chronic illness. Current laws have twice been challenged in Canada on constitutional grounds.
Many health-care professionals and advocacy groups support the Liberals’ assisted dying regime, saying it provides humane relief for patients grappling with chronic and often painful illnesses.
Patients who seek euthanasia are overwhelmingly people who have sought any and all alternatives, but who ultimately determine they have no other options, said Julie Campbell, an Ontario nurse who guides patients seeking assisted dying services.
“If I could give my patients anything, I would give them life,” she said. “But life isn’t necessarily the option they’re being presented with.”
“Many of them are choosing between very hard choices, and my wish for them to be better certainly doesn’t make that so.”
A recent Angus Reid poll, commissioned by Cardus, found that 77 per cent of Canadians considered access to MAID to be a basic human right.
However 48 per cent of those respondents were “cautious supporters” citing concerns around potential abuses of the system, particularly for aging and vulnerable people.
The federal Conservatives are divided on the legislation. Opposition leader Erin O’Toole and 77 other MPs voted against Bill C-7 at second reading, with 43 MPs voting in favour.
Conservative members of the justice committee last week grilled several Liberal MPs about the bill, and questioned why Ottawa did not appeal the Quebec Superior Court decision.
Changes under the new bill would reduce the number of witnesses required from two to one, and drop a requirement that a patient must be able to give consent a second time immediately before taking their lives. Another provision drops the requirement that a person must wait 10 days after being approved for the procedure.
Dr. Ewan Goligher, assistant professor at the University of Toronto, echoed other criticisms on Tuesday by saying the new legislation implicitly singles out people with disabilities, and could lead to otherwise preventable deaths.
“Bill C-7 declares an entire class of people, those with physical disabilities, as potentially appropriate for suicide — that their lives are potentially not worth living,” he said. “Indeed were it not for their disability, we would not be willing to end them. I cannot imagine a more degrading and discriminatory message for our society to communicate to our fellow citizens living with disabilities.”
Others suggested that the changes to MAID are premature, as broader supports for people with disabilities remain inadequate, and therefore put vulnerable people at risk of misuse of the system.
“Until we’re committed to making sure that everybody has an equal opportunity to live a good life, then medically assisted death on the basis of that disability is not the solution,” said Krista Carr, executive vice-president of Inclusion Canada.
In its 2019 decision, the Quebec Superior Court took issue with the MAID law on the grounds that the requirement for natural death to be “reasonably foreseeable” was an arbitrary one, in which “suffering takes a back seat” to the question of how far away a patient might be from death.
“This is a flagrant contradiction of the fundamental principles concerning the autonomy of competent people, and it is this unequal recognition of the right to autonomy and dignity that is discriminatory in this case,” the decision said.
I CANNOT IMAGINE A MORE DEGRADING … MESSAGE