I want to live. Ontario refuses home care to terminally ill man.

Alex Schadenberg
Executive Director - Euthanasia Prevention Coalition

A few weeks ago, CTV news reported that Roger Foley, from London ON  launched a lawsuit stating that he was offered euthanasia (MAiD) but he was not being offered assisted life.

• Canadian man wants assisted life not assisted death.

Foley, who lives with cerebellar ataxia, a degenerative neurological condition, requires home care for independent living. Foley was turned down by the government for Self-Directed Personal Support.

• Petition: I support Roger Foley's plea assisted life not assisted death (Link).

Last week Lighthouse News interviewed me about the Foley case. Here is what I said:

Foley is not in any way asking (for) or wanting Medical Assistance in Dying. What he wants is assistance in living.

What happened is that he was living in his apartment, and ...had problems with inappropriate things happening to him that actually had him put back in the hospital. So because he’s in this situation, he’s unable to leave the hospital until as he says “I can be assured that I have proper care in the home.”

The program is called “Self-Directed Personal Support Services Ontario.” And it does exist, but the government turned him down for that.

So what does the Foley's case state:

he’s making the argument “What if I want to live, and I’m not receiving the services that make it possible to enable me to live? And yet, they’re offering me assisted death. So they are offering me the "choice" of assisted death, or languishing in a hospital without the type of care that I would rather have.”

I then commented on the similarities with the Candice Lewis experience:

What’s also interesting is to bring this back to what happened to Candice Lewis in Newfoundland. Just to remind you, in 2016, soon after euthanasia was legalized in Canada, Candace was in hospital in Newfoundland. She was very sick; she was only 25 years old, but she was born with multiple disabilities, and the doctor was pressuring her and her family for euthanasia; so much so that the mother went to the CBC News.  

We have interviews with her through our social media and she is better now. But the fact is that this is the same sort of idea. You’re pressured towards euthanasia, and you’re not interested in euthanasia; what you want is the treatment and the care to allow you to get better.

The Foley and Lewis cases don't surprise me. People are being pressured to euthanasia or denied the care that they need to live because Canada decided that it is acceptable to kill people at the most vulnerable time of their lives. There will always be some abuse of the law. 

People who are living with vulnerable conditions need protection not lethal injection.