The group that orchestrated Canada's euthanasia law, admits abuse of the law

"In one instance, they spoke of a patient who had been approved for assisted dying on the grounds of suffering from hearing loss."

Alex Schadenberg
Executive Director, 

Euthanasia Prevention Coalition

Cameron Henderson reported for The Telegraph on October 26 that the BC Civil Liberties Association (BCCLA) admits that Canada's euthanasia is being abused. It was the BCCLA that carried the Carter case that legalized euthanasia in Canada to the Supreme Court. According to Henderson:

Assisted dying is being abused in Canada with doctors coercing patients into ending their lives, members of the group who helped to legalise it have admitted.

Henderson reports that:

The Telegraph can now reveal that members of the British Columbia Civil liberties Association (BCCLA), the group that spearheaded efforts to legalise assisted dying, have privately raised fears the practice is being “abused”.

Staff members also fear disabled people in Canada are being coerced by doctors into choosing to end their lives.

Henderson's report is published one week after the Chief Coroner of Ontario pubished a review of Ontario's experience with euthanasia which indicated that:

those on lower incomes who were offered the scheme were more likely to opt for it.

Henderson uncovers the information from a leaked footage from a video call last year between BCCLA staff and a Canadian disabled patients’ group.

In the footage a BCCLA employee admits that:

“we are seeing MAiD being abused”.

Henderson further reports that:

In one instance, they spoke of a patient who had been approved for assisted dying on the grounds of suffering from hearing loss.

On the same call, it was claimed some medical colleges in Canada had been advising against referring to MAiD on patients’ long-form death certificates, in a move which could distort the true numbers of people using it.

Some BCCLA staff members feel very uncomfortable with Canada's euthanasia law. Henderson writes:

One staff member admitted feeling “very uncomfortable” about the group’s previous campaigning on assisted suicide.

Speaking on the call, one of the two current BCCLA employees said: “It is the social and material aspect of [patients] disability and how that isn’t supported and how that’s treated in the community that’s creating intolerable conditions.

“In my view, that’s not proper,” they said, adding that healthcare providers should not raise the subject of MAiD with patients as “it’s far too easy for that to become coercive”.

In a separate voicemail message shared with The Telegraph, another alleged employee voiced regret about the campaigning group’s past agenda and spoke of trying to formulate a new policy that “distances the BCCLA from its past work”.

Henderson reports that the Joseph Arvay, for the BCCLA, argued before the courts in the Carter case that:

the risk of people unnecessarily ending their lives through an assisted dying scheme was negligible.

The euthanasia review from the Chief Coroner of Ontario of the euthanasia law was published last week. Henderson reports:

Yet fast-forward eight years, and the first official report into assisted dying deaths in Ontario, revealed last week by The Telegraph, found vulnerable people faced “potential coercion” and “undue influence” to seek out the practice.

According to the data, disproportionate numbers of people who ended their lives through assisted dying when they were not terminally ill – 29 per cent – came from Ontario’s poorest areas.

That compares with 20 per cent of the province’s general population living in the most deprived communities.

The Telegraph is reporting on Canada's experience with euthanasia as the UK parliament is scheduled to vote on a bill to legalize assisted suicide on November 29.