Chris Selley: Canada is as unprepared to expand access to assisted suicide as it was to fight COVID-19
In a few years' time, if not sooner, Canadians will see 'medical assistance in dying' as a shameful disgrace
Author of the article: Chris Selley
Publishing date: Feb 05, 2021 • February 5, 2021 • 4 minute read •
Nicole Gladu, left, and Jean Truchon at a news conference in Montreal on Sept. 12, 2019, where they gave their reaction to a Quebec judge overturning parts of provincial and federal laws on medically assisted dying. Photo by Graham Hughes/The Canadian Press/File
Article content
When Parliament passed Canada’s current assisted suicide law in 2016, it was widely condemned as discriminatory. And it clearly is. The requirement that a patient’s “natural death must be reasonable foreseeable” to access “medical assistance in dying (MAID),” as we clinically call it, excludes many kinds of suffering that reasonable people might find unendurable: physical disabilities, mental illnesses. Canadian governments can’t legally discriminate on those grounds any more than they can on race or gender.