National Post (National Edition)
GROWING DISCOMFORT WITH MAiD EXPANSION
B.C. police probe woman's allegedly quick death
Only six years after Ottawa's legalization of medically assisted death, a spate of recent incidents has highlighted fears that the Canadian medical system may have become far too comfortable with prescribing death to patients.
In a Canadian first, Abbotsford Police are investigating a clinic regarding allegations that they were too quick to administer euthanasia to a patient suffering from untreated mental illness.
B.C. woman Donna Duncan was approved for a medically assisted death in October, following months of physical and mental decline that began with a concussion suffered in a car crash and family say was exacerbated by a failure to access treatment due to months-long waiting lists.
After failing to stop their mother's scheduled death via court injunction, Duncan's daughters Alicia and Christie Duncan contacted the police on the grounds that nurse practitioners had approved Duncan's request for a medically assisted death without adequately assessing her mental state.
“While we have been advocates of death by Medical Assistance in situations where there is a terminal diagnosis or death is imminent, we had no idea that Canada's laws leave considerable room for interpretation by activist doctors,” Alicia wrote in a GoFundMe looking to challenge Canadian MAID legislation.
Duncan's fate is similar to that of another British Columbian, Alan Nichols, a severely mentally ill man who was euthanized in 2019 at Chilliwack General Hospital.
Only days prior, a severe psychiatric episode had seen Nichols' family admit him to the hospital under the Mental Health Act.
Soon after Nichols' discharge to the hospital's regular ward, his siblings received a call saying that their brother had consented to a doctor-assisted death.
“They killed our brother,” Alan's brother Wayne told National Post last month.
As with the Duncan case, a throughline in many high-profile cases of controversial assisted deaths are Canadians reportedly opting to take their own lives largely because they were unable to secure proper housing or medical care.
A CTV investigation found that in February, a 51-yearold Ontario woman opted for a medically assisted death after she failed to secure affordable housing that accommodated her multiple severe chemical sensitivities. In 2020, Maclean's profiled the case of a disabled woman who applied for medically assisted death because she felt overwhelmed by the cost of food and lodging.
“I have no other reason to want to apply for assisted suicide, other than I simply cannot afford to keep on living,” she said.
This prompted a recent column in Britain's The Spectator that accused Canada of “euthanizing its poor.”
“Canadian law, in all its majesty, has allowed both the rich as well as the poor to kill themselves if they are too poor to continue living with dignity,” wrote Oxford University researcher Yuan Yi Zhu. “What it will not do is spend money to allow them to live instead of killing themselves.”
According to the federal government's own math, there is indeed a cost savings to the Canadian health-care system for every extra patient that is euthanized.
A 2020 report by the Parliamentary
Budget Officer estimated that the 6,465 medically assisted deaths scheduled for 2021 was poised to save $109.2 million in “end of life costs.” The report added that loosening the criteria for medically assisted death would expand the savings still further. If euthanasia were also permitted for Canadians without terminal illnesses, an extra 1,164 per year could expect to opt for a medically assisted death, at a total cost savings of $62 million.
“Expanding access to MAID will result in a net reduction in health care costs for the provincial governments,” it read.
Canada is only 10 months away from a new legal regime that would vastly expand the criteria under which a patient can be approved for doctor-assisted death.
When a Supreme Court ruling first compelled the House of Commons to legalize medically assisted death in 2016, the resulting legislation strictly reserved euthanasia only to those whose death was “reasonably foreseeable.”
A subsequent Quebec Superior Court ruling struck down the “reasonably foreseeable” measure as unconstitutional.
Ottawa, which did not appeal the ruling, responded with Bill C-7.
Entering into force in March 2023, Bill C-7 expands medically assisted dying to Canadians without terminal diseases, including those whose only underlying condition is a mental illness.