MAiD Euthanasia and Assisted Suicide

Early one morning in June 2024, Bas pulled up next to his parents’ campervan, parked on a sunny marina in the north of the Netherlands.

His father and mother, Jan and Els, had spent most of their married life on water. Now in their 70s, they could no longer manage a houseboat. Their campervan, positioned close to the yachts and dinghies, was the next best thing.

Jan and Els got into their son’s car. Bas started the engine. This would be the final time he drove his parents anywhere. For Jan and Els, this journey – to the local hospice – would be their last.

One in 10 Canadians knows someone who has been offered MAID for a treatable condition, and nearly one in five knows someone who has died while on a wait list for medical treatment.

That’s according to a new Leger survey commissioned by the think tank Second Street.

A randomly selected survey group of 1,500 Canadians was asked if they or someone they knew had been offered a medically assisted death for a condition they felt was treatable.

The federal government has tabled new legislation that excludes people suffering solely from mental illness from qualifying for medically assisted death.

Justice Minister Sean Fraser had said earlier this month that Ottawa decided not to move forward with plans to expand MAID access “in circumstances where mental illness is the sole basis.”

“While there is not a perfect consensus on this issue, we believe this is the correct approach at this particular time,” he said on Oct. 7.

A child in the Netherlands, whose sex has not been revealed, was recently euthanized at the behest of their parents and doctors. Normally, such a case would warrant arrests, trials and convictions. But one crucial fact changed what should have been a straightforward matter of law enforcement: the child in question was severely disabled — not brain dead, not dying — disabled. One would think that such a practice would be condemned by democracies worldwide, especially those that employ highfalutin jargon about human rights and dignity in common parlance.

Five years ago, Parliament made disastrous changes to Canada’s assisted dying law, including one that was almost an afterthought. The government’s original bill did not include expanding MAID for mental illness. The Senate added the expansion; the government — up against a court deadline that had already been extended four times — accepted it with a two-year delay. Within weeks, it was passed by the House under a closure motion.

Since then, that clock has governed the issue of MAID’s expansion, which has already been delayed twice.

The former Quebec premier who oversaw passage of Canada’s first-ever medically assisted dying law says he now feels conflicted after seeing how far the practice has progressed since then.

Quebec’s National Assembly passed the law in 2014 outlining conditions under which terminally ill patients could formally request medical assistance in dying (MAID).

Canada has seemingly decided to stop sliding down the slippery slope of assisted dying. On Wednesday, the country’s Justice Minister, Sean Fraser, revealed that the Liberal government would be indefinitely suspending its plan to legalize assisted dying for individuals whose only condition is mental. Before this, legislation had been passed which meant that, from March of next year, Canadians could apply to end their lives solely on the basis of mental illness.

Euthanasia is killing quite a lot of people in Canada. 5% of deaths are now the work of the government. But to make killing people seem less bad, they called it MAID. Which sounds like a home cleaning service. That kills you.

The same people who reject the idea of the death penalty for murderers are really enthusiastic about this sort of death care.

OTTAWA — The Liberal government says it will table legislation in the fall to indefinitely exclude people who solely suffer from mental illness from medical assistance in dying.

Justice Minister Sean Fraser said there is a lack of consensus on when mental illness is irremediable, and concern around a lack of access to mental health supports.

“While there is not a perfect consensus on this issue. We believe this is the correct approach at this particular time,” Fraser said.

Everywhere that assisted suicide has been legalized, critics have warned that, however tight the initial restrictions limiting the use of this so-called process may at first be, its legalization could become the beginning of a slippery slope. Canada was not the first country to legalize assisted suicide. But Canada is presently the poster child for what the slippery slope looks like. Although Canada’s Criminal Code, which governs this procedure, originally required two witnesses to the application it was subsequently amended to require only one. For those who are curious as to where the slippery slope can ultimately lead, a recent case has spelled this out quite clearly: it leads to a criminal investigation.

Canada has what the world wants says Carney!

Top Canadian doctors are raising alarm bells over the country’s seemingly quick approval for assisted dying requests, after one elderly woman was accepted based on the fact that she lost the ability to cook meals for her family.

Doctors Gary Rodin and Madeline Li from the University of Toronto shared mounting fears among Canada’s healthcare professionals over increasing cases of euthanasia approvals.

The psychiatry professors said they aren’t opposed to legalized medical assistance in dying, but stressed that Canadian law does not require healthcare professionals to guide patients toward seeking alternative help.

h/t patthedog

We are psychiatrists who work with patients with advanced cancer. It’s no wonder, then, that when Canada legalized medical assistance in dying a decade ago, it quickly became a major topic of conversation in our clinics. We’ve counseled patients about the procedure and assessed whether they were eligible. One of us has administered the drugs to end patients’ lives. We’ve also researched what leads people to choose this option. And together, we created an institutional framework that determined how one of Canada’s largest medical centers would respond to requests for assisted death.