CBC radio propaganda promoting euthanasia for dementia.

Alex Schadenberg
Executive Director, Euthanasia Prevention Coalition

CBC radio produced a "documentary" that aired on October 27 titled Ten Minutes to Midnight that is more of a propaganda production promoting euthanasia for people with dementia than a documentary investigating how Canada's euthanasia law may apply to people with dementia.

I refer to it as propaganda because the documentary is promoting euthanasia for dementia, rather than simply discussing the issue. For instance the program ends by stating:

"The more we talk about this topic, the more comfortable we'll be, the better our deaths will be, however we want to shape them,"...

Canada's euthanasia law appears to not permit euthanasia for dementia alone but a closer reading of the law indicates that the physician defines a patient's competency to consent. Canada's euthanasia law, states:

241.2 (3) Before a medical practitioner or nurse practitioner provides a person with medical assistance in dying, the medical practitioner or nurse practitioner must
(a) be of the opinion that the person meets all of the criteria set out in subsection (1)

This means that the medical or nurse practitioner is only required to "be of the opinion" that the person meets the criteria of the law. Canada's euthanasia law can and is being interpreted in a very wide manner.

The purpose of this program was to inform Canadians with dementia that they qualify for euthanasia. The program states:

Wilson died with medical assistance on Oct. 29, 2017. In February 2018, the College of Physicians and Surgeons of British Columbia opened an investigation into the three doctors involved, as reported in the Globe and Mail.

At the same time, Green's colleagues at CAMAP were assembling a new guidance document that outlined the circumstances under which people with dementia might be eligible to receive MAID.

Ten months after the Wilson investigation began, the college cleared the doctors involved of any wrongdoing.

In the spring of 2019, after extensive conversations with colleagues and legal scholars, Green decided she was ready to reconsider helping Gayle. She did a second assessment.

By then, Gayle's condition had deteriorated. His mental processing had slowed, and he struggled in conversation.

"I was able to determine that Gayle still knew what was going on around him and with him. He understood that he had dementia, that it had progressed," Green said.

"At that point I really believed that Gayle had both capacity and was suffering intolerably."

On May 9, she approved his MAID application.

But in July, Gayle woke from a nap and, for the first time, didn't recognize his wife. Barbara worried he had lost capacity and would no longer be eligible for MAID.

The first point is that the doctors that were involved with Wilson's euthanasia death were cleared of wrong-doing. 

The second point is that Dr Green decided, that in her opinion Gayle was capable of consenting to his death. The article went further:

Green said the case may still spark concerns about whether the law is being expanded, but she argued it does not represent a "so-called slippery slope."

"This is not an expansion of our law … This is a maturing of the understanding of what we're doing," she said.

Green states that the continual expansion of the euthanasia law is not a slippery slope, but rather a maturing of the law. The euthanasia lobby denies that a slippery slope exists in Canada to not create a problem in other jurisdictions, such as Australia or New Zealand, who are debating euthanasia.


Canada's national broadcasting company regularly publishes articles that promote the expansion of euthanasia in Canada. This broadcast is one more CBC propaganda production.
 
The fast expansion of euthanasia in Canada. 

In July, Alan Nichols, also from BC, died by euthanasia, even though he was not physically ill but rather living with chronic depression. His family told the doctors that Alan was not competent and they urged the doctors not to euthanize Alan, but to no avail.

Last month, a Québec court expanded Canada's euthanasia law by striking down the requirement that a person's natural death must be reasonably forseeable. The federal and Québec governments did not appeal the decision, thus removing the "terminal illness" safeguard within the law.


Further to that, the number of euthanasia deaths is growing quickly in Canada. The 2018 data indicated a 50% increase in deaths over 2017 and the recent Ontario data indicates that there were 368 reported euthanasia deaths in the first quarter of 2019 and 519 reported euthanasia deaths in the third quarter of 2019.