Canada is getting comfortable with killing people with disabilities.

Alex Schadenberg
Executive Director, Euthanasia Prevention Coalition

Tristin Hopper wrote an insightful article that was published in the National Post on August 15 titled: Canada is getting comfortable with killing its disabled.

Roger Foley

Hopper focuses on several stories concerning people with disabilities who have been pressured to die or have died by euthanasia. Many of these people have disabilities and were also living in poverty.

Hopper writes about Roger Foley of London, Ontario, who did not ask for euthanasia but was urged to ask for it. Hopper writes:

This week, a feature by the Associated Press quoted secretly recorded audio from a London, Ont. hospital that appeared to show a medical ethicist raising the subject of euthanasia with a disabled patient, Roger Foley, after reminding him that he was costing the system “north of $1,500 a day.”

Foley told the AP that he had never previously expressed a desire for medically assisted death, and began recording the staff after they kept mentioning it to see if he had “an interest.”

There are people with MCS (Multiple Chemical Sensitivities) who were approved for euthanasia because they couldn't afford a clean place to live. Hopper writes:

There was “Sophia,” a 51-year-old Toronto woman with severe chemical sensitivities who took MAID after she was unable to find an affordable home free of the smell of smoke or chemical cleaners. “Denise,” a 31-year-old Toronto woman, similarly pursued euthanasia as a result of what she called “abject poverty” preventing her from securing appropriate accommodation for a variety of chronic conditions.

Alan Nichols

Alan Nichols died by euthanasia even though he was not terminally ill, but experiencing depression. Hopper wrote:

Alan Nichols, a severely depressed B.C. man, was administered MAID shortly after being taken to the hospital by his family for a psychiatric episode. “They killed our brother,” Nichols’ brother Wayne told the National Post.

Gwen (not her real name), a woman with chronic pain, says that euthanasia will remove patients like her. Hopper quotes Gwen, who said the The Tyee:

“It’s eugenics, because they don’t want us to be properly supported and be OK. And if we don’t have family to take care of us, it’s ‘Please just go and die,’”

Hopper also quotes from Mark Komrad, a psychiatrist at the Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore, who argues that Canada's law:

“...will provide, not prevent, suicide for some psychiatric patients,”

Hopper also quotes from a report by a team of United Nations special rapporteurs, who warned that Canada’s liberalization of euthanasia posed dire threats to its elderly:

“There is a grave concern that, if assisted dying is made available for all persons with a health condition or impairment … a social assumption might follow (or be subtly reinforced) that it is better to be dead than to live with a disability.”

Hopper quotes from all of these news stories while acknowledging that the number of Canadian euthanasia deaths have increased significantly:

MAID has seen a dramatic upswing in recent years. In 2020, nearly 7,600 Canadians ended their lives via euthanasia, a 17 per cent increase over the year prior. In disproportionately elderly regions like Vancouver Island, MAID is now the cause of 7.5 per cent of all deaths.

Hopper does miss the recent federal report which indicated that there were more than 10,000 Canadian euthanasia deaths in 2021.

These human experiences, along with many others, provide no surprise that the world is wondering why Canada is euthanizing its poor. 

The real question is: Has the federal government recognized that their experiment with legalized euthanasia has failed and is now out-of-control?