The Trudeau government has given the world a textbook on what not to do
With the prospect of assisted dying being legalised in the UK, the Canadian experience serves as a cautionary tale of what can go horribly wrong.
In 2015, Canada’s Supreme Court ruled that it is a fundamental right of Canadians who suffer from a “grievous and irremediable” medical condition to be assisted to kill themselves. The Court dismissed as fallacy warnings of a “slippery slope” leading to the devaluing of human life and potential harms to vulnerable persons. The Court reasoned that vulnerable persons could be protected though “stringent and well-enforced safeguards.”
Fast forward to today. In less than a decade, the “slippery slope” has arrived, with Canada arguably having the world’s most permissive assisted dying regime – or medical assistance in dying (MAiD) as it is referred to in Canada. According to the latest Health Canada data, Canada will soon have the highest per capita MAiD death rate in the world. Year-on-year MAiD deaths have increased at a staggering rate of approximately 30 per cent.
The “stringent and well-enforced safeguards” envisioned by the Supreme Court largely do not exist. What few safeguards there are have been ineffective. There are well-documented and shocking cases of vulnerable persons receiving MAiD due to poverty and social isolation.
The discourse around MAiD in Canada has become perverse. During a parliamentary committee hearing, a physician representing the Québec Medical Association disturbingly recommended euthanising infants with severe deformities.
How did MAiD go off the rails so quickly in Canada? It didn’t happen in a vacuum. It happened because Justin Trudeau’s government has approached MAiD almost exclusively through the ideological lens of individual autonomy without appropriate regard for negative impacts to vulnerable persons.
The Trudeau government, after being elected in 2015, was effectively forced by the Supreme Court’s decision to craft a legislative framework for MAiD, including eligibility criteria and safeguards. Initially, the Trudeau government took a somewhat cautious approach. The government’s original MAiD legislation required patients to meet certain criteria, including that their natural death be “reasonably foreseeable.”
One of the Exploited