Euthanasia is a runaway train in Canada

Time to hit the brakes

A WOMAN'S BODY IS

HER PROPERTY: HER

BODY, HER CHOICE.

— ADAM ZIVO

Next year, Canadians suffering solely from mental illness may be eligible for medically assisted death. A parliamentary committee will release a report by June with recommendations on how this and other potential changes to Canada's laws on euthanasia might be implemented. Rather than suggest how to go about these changes, this committee should recommend that we not go about them at all. Euthanasia should not be further expanded in Canada.

Canada legalized euthanasia in 2016 after the Supreme Court ruled that physician-assisted death is protected by the Charter of Rights and Freedoms for consenting, competent adults in certain medical circumstances. Parliament, in legalizing euthanasia, restricted it to persons with physical ailments who were nearing death and suffering greatly.

This restriction was challenged as unconstitutional, and in 2019 a Quebec court ruled that confining euthanasia to the end-of-life context violated the charter. In 2021, Parliament expanded euthanasia to encompass significant suffering regardless of whether death is on the horizon and stipulated that euthanasia for mental illness would become available in 2023.

By next year, Canada may have journeyed — in only seven years — from a total prohibition on euthanasia to euthanasia at an adult's deathbed to euthanasia for mental and physical illness at any moment of an adult's life. The speed with which we have travelled on an issue of tectonic societal significance, and the territory we have covered, should raise questions about the wisdom of our approach. Advocates say it is progress. I worry it is a runaway train.

I believe that euthanasia, in any form, is the wrong choice for a society. It opens a Pandora's box of risk. It also sends disturbing messages, teaching that human life is a depreciating asset with a “best before” date or that certain conditions are a “fate worse than death.” Human dignity — each person's intrinsic worth and value — never disappears, no matter how dire the circumstances may be.

But reasonable people of goodwill can and do disagree about euthanasia, and our courts have ruled that euthanasia is, at least to some extent, protected by the charter. Unless governments wish to use the notwithstanding clause to express their disagreement with the courts and restore the total prohibition on euthanasia, I believe we should go no further than the courts have said we need to. The risks that attend any further expansion of euthanasia are simply too great. The federal law on euthanasia enacted last year recognizes this to be true, noting the “inherent risks and complexity of the provision of medical assistance in dying” for mental illness.

No court in Canada has held that the charter demands euthanasia for mental illness. I hope the courts never reach this conclusion. Apart from my skepticism that the right to “life, liberty, and security of the person” calls for euthanasia in any form, granting euthanasia to persons with mental illness would arguably violate this charter right. If a person's mental illness inclines that person to suicidal ideation, does the government not jeopardize that person's life by offering that person assisted suicide?

What about offering euthanasia when palliative care is lacking? As euthanasia has rapidly expanded in Canada, access to palliative care has remained woefully inadequate. Studies vary on the precise quality of access to this care, but virtually none paint an encouraging picture. Parliament has recognized that a “request for physician-assisted death cannot be truly voluntary if the option of proper palliative care is not available to alleviate a person's suffering”. It is fair to surmise that many of the thousands of Canadians who have already chosen euthanasia did so because they felt they had no other realistic way to manage their pain and suffering. This is a national tragedy.

At times, euthanasia has even undermined access to palliative care. In British Columbia, a private hospice — a facility dedicated to caring for individuals nearing death — was shuttered last year after it conscientiously refused to offer euthanasia. Provincial authorities forced the hospice to close even after it proposed to operate without public funds, though it was reopened under direct public control.

It's one thing to legalize euthanasia. It's another thing to coerce people to get on board with it or get out of health care. This totalitarian approach, which assumes that every citizen supports euthanasia, is unbecoming of a free and democratic society that features a range of views on this topic. And if there is any sector of society where freedom of conscience should be robust, health care is it. The interests at stake — life, death, human dignity — demand nothing less.

Despite the alarm bells, Canada may soon have one of the most permissive euthanasia laws in the world. Besides euthanasia for mental illness, the parliamentary committee currently at work is also exploring euthanasia for mature minors and allowing advance consent to euthanasia.

But our lawmakers can still reject any further expansion of euthanasia in this country. They need not think that the only way forward is making euthanasia more available to more Canadians. Hitting the brakes on euthanasia may be the increasingly unpopular choice. But it's the right thing to do.

EUTHANASIA IN ANY FORM IS THE WRONG CHOICE FOR

SOCIETY.