Chris Selley
WSJ, Dec. 30, 2023
“Canada, however, is bizarrely obsessed with “equal rights”—and far more deferential than it should be to hopelessly out-of-touch judges who have driven both the legalization and expansion of euthanasia.”
Canada’s Supreme Court held in 2015 that people with “a grievous and irremediable medical condition” had a right to assisted suicide, and Parliament responded the following year by enacting a law legalizing “medical assistance in dying,” or MAID. In October 2019, during Justin Trudeau’s first re-election campaign, the prime minister stressed the importance of “ensuring that everyone gets the supports, the treatment they need to live in dignity, and to make the choice of medical assistance in dying one that is made in a way that isn’t because you’re not getting the supports and care that you actually need.” In hindsight, that should have been a gigantic red flag.
Mr. Trudeau essentially promised to strengthen Canada’s social safety net so that no one would want to die rather than live under difficult circumstances. Three years later, that safety net is no less flimsy, and the result he warned about is happening. On Dec. 15, Justice Minister David Lametti announced the government would delay—but not abandon—the planned expansion of MAID to cover those with mental illness. But that point may already be moot.
In April, CTV News reported on two unnamed women who had petitioned to be euthanized for want of housing suitable to their diagnosis of multiple chemical sensitivity, or MCS—a reported intolerance to smoke, air fresheners, commercial cleansers and other irritants that is almost certainly an anxiety disorder. (Studies have found MCS sufferers react negatively to purported irritants that haven’t been introduced into the test environment.)
One of them, a 31-year-old Toronto woman, said she found applying for MAID “surprisingly much easier” than trying to find an apartment. She had sign-off from one of the two doctors or nurse practitioners required for government-provided death. The other, a 51-year-old woman also from Ontario, was already dead. …Source
