Canadian man wants assisted life not assisted death.

Sign the petition: I support Roger Foley's plea assisted life not assisted death (Link).

Roger Foley

Alex Schadenberg
Executive Director, Euthanasia Prevention Coalition

CTV News reported that Roger Foley, who lives with cerebellar ataxia, a degenerative neurological condition, has launched a lawsuit naming the London Health Sciences Centre and the Southwest Regional LHIN, stating that they are offering him assisted death (MAiD) but they are not willing to provide him with an assisted life.

CTV News reported Foley as stating:

a government-selected home care provider had previously left him in ill health with injuries and food poisoning. Unwilling to continue living at home with the help of that home care provider, and eager to leave the London hospital where he’s been cloistered for two years, Foley is suing the hospital, several health agencies and the attorneys general of Ontario and Canada in the hopes of being given the opportunity to set up a health care team to help him live at home again -- a request he claims he has previously been denied.

“I have no desire to take up a valuable hospital bed,” Foley explained. “But at this point, it’s my only option.”

Foley has been offered euthanasia (MAiD), but Foley does not want to die - he simply wants to live at home. CTV News reported:

“I have been given the wrong medications, I have been provided food where I got food poisoning, I’ve had workers fall asleep in my living room, burners and appliances constantly left on, a fire, and I have been injured during exercises and transfers, When I report(ed) these things to the agency, I would not get a response.” 

“Unfortunately, the Ontario health-care system and the Ontario home-care system has broken my spirit and sent my life into a void of bureaucracy accompanied by a lack of accountability and oversight,”  

Foley has asked to manage his own home care team. Doing that is called “self-directed care,” and Ontario recently created an agency called Self-Directed Personal Support Services Ontario (SDPSSO) to help co-ordinate such activities. 

“I need self-directed funding in order to return to my home, I need to be able to hire my own workers to build my (home) care to work with me”

Foley's lawyer, Ken Berger, doesn't understand why they have not offered a solution for Foley. Berger stated:

the only two options offered to him have been a “forced discharge” from the hospital “to work with contracted agencies that have failed him” or medically assisted death. Refusing to leave the hospital and unwilling to die by a doctor’s hand, Foley claims he has been threatened with a $1,800 per day hospital bill, which is roughly the non-OHIP daily rate for a hospital stay. 

Foley’s statement of claim also alleges that his Charter rights “to life, liberty and security of the person” were violated when he was offered the above options without being given the chance to create a “safe and available self-directed assisted care option that would substantially alleviate his irremediable and intolerable suffering.”

Sign the petition: I support Roger Foley's plea assisted life not assisted death (Link).

 The Euthanasia Prevention Coalition supports Foley's case and all others who require assisted living not "assisted death." We believe in caring for people, not killing.