Euthanasia is being used to kill people in poverty, isolation and social suffering.

What real choice does a person have who’s already suffering from mental illness, doesn’t have caring people nearby, isn’t getting adequate medical attention and social supports and may already be contemplating suicide?

Alex Schadenberg
Executive Director, 

Euthanasia Prevention Coalition

Article: Ontario MAiD Death Review Stories. Do you have a MAiD death story? (Link).

Andrew Phillips, a staff columnist with the Toronto Star wrote an excellent opinion article titled: Assisted suicide is being used to relieve people of poverty, isolation and social suffering. This is not OK. Yes this article published in the Toronto Star.

Phillips is writing about the report issued by the Ontario chief coroner’s office on how medical assistance in dying (MAID) is being carried out in this province. Phillips refers to two of the six cases that were outlined in the report.

Mr. A, “a male in his 40s,” was suffering from inflammatory bowel disease. He also had “a history of mental illness, previous episodes of suicidality, and ongoing alcohol and opioid misuse.” No one offered him treatment for his addictions, but a psychiatrist gave him information about MAID. He was approved for death under what’s known as “Track 2” — cases where death is not reasonably foreseeable. A MAID provider personally drove him to the place where he was given an assisted death.

Mr. B, “a male in his late 40s,” was suffering from severe ulcers. He also “presented with multiple mental illnesses, namely depression, anxiety, narcissistic personality disorder, and bipolar mood disorder type 2. He had chronic suicidal ideations” — and indeed had attempted suicide a year earlier. Mr. B also applied under Track 2 and became one of 116 Ontarians to die that way last year.

Phillips then writes:

I spell out those details because the two recent reports on MAID from Ontario’s chief coroner are like that: detailed, clinical, dispassionate. They’re the opposite of sensational, at least in style.

But what they reveal ought to be shocking. Some patients are being euthanized while suffering from untreated mental illnesses and addictions. They’re more likely to come from poor areas (those with “high levels of marginalization,” as the reports put it) and be suffering from inadequate housing, a lack of social supports and simple loneliness.

Phillips, who supports euthanasia, states that 2.6% of the 4644 Ontario euthanasia deaths in 2023 were Track 2 deaths, meaning, the person wasn't terminally ill. Phillips then states:

But somehow we’ve turned a system that Canadians thought was supposed to spare people in the last stages of life from needless pain and suffering (a laudable goal, and one I share), to a system in which some people are being nudged toward death as a way to escape poverty, isolation and social suffering.

Phillips states that some members of the Ontario MAiD Death Review committee are not bothered by the cases outlined in the report. Philips writes:

they appear to think they are rare outliers and what should matter above all is a person’s individual autonomy — “my death, my choice.”

Phillips responds by stating:

What real choice does a person have who’s already suffering from mental illness, doesn’t have caring people nearby, isn’t getting adequate medical attention and social supports and may already be contemplating suicide?

Dr Sonu Gaind

Psychiatrist, Dr Sonu Gaind, is then interviewed by Phillips:

Dr. Sonu Gaind, a psychiatrist who’s deeply involved in the issue, says all this shouldn’t be surprising because Canada’s MAID system has been shaped by advocates wedded to the “right to die” mantra of individual choice. They’re constantly pressing to expand the criteria for MAID to include more and more people, leading to the slippery slope that opponents of assisted death warned of years ago.

Gaind notes some advocates are dismissing the troubling cases cited in the coroners’ reports because, they say, marginalized people already die at a higher rate than others so it should come as no surprise that more of them die from MAID as well. “Claiming that state-facilitated death fuelled by social deprivation is acceptable since more marginalized people die from social deprivation and structural inequities anyway is indistinguishable from eugenics,” he writes in the Conversation.

“My death, my choice” sounds good but it doesn’t let us off the hook as a society. We have a decision to make: do we ensure vulnerable, suffering people have the support they need to live decently? Or do we collectively decide that’s too complicated and expensive and usher them gently towards an early death?

Previous articles on this topic:

• Canadians with disabilities are needlessly dying by euthanasia (Link).
• Euthanasia for post Covid-19 syndrome (Link).
• Ontario Coroner's euthanasia report - Poor at risk of coercion (Link).
• Some euthanasia deaths are driven by homelessness, fear and isolation (Link).