Reduction in home care for people with disabilities in Québec

By Odile Marcotte
Retired Professor Department of Computer Science, UQAM and a Euthanasia Prevention Coalition board member.

Odile Marcotte

The May 28 edition of the Le Devoir newspaper featured the story of Benjamin Leclair, a former wakeboarding champion who is now a tetraplegic. The local health board authority, known by the acronym CISSSMO, has recently reduced to 56 hours the number of hours allocated to Mr. Leclair's home care, arguing that this number of hours is more in line with its criteria ("grid") for allocating home care time to patients. Mr. Leclair's social worker explained to him that the health network, now managed by Santé Québec, was under pressure to save money. Actually CISSSMO claims that it is offering services to more patients than before (2335 in 2026 versus 2314 in 2025), and the number of service hours had to be reduced for some patients.

Mr. Leclair is not the only person in this situation: according to Hugo Vaillancourt, director of Ex aequo, people with disabilities are made to feel guilty when they ask for resources such as home care. Eventually the person has to rely on a caregiver, such as a spouse, who has not always undergone health care training. For instance, Aurélie, Benjamin Leclair's partner, had to quit her job to take care of him but is not trained to help him with his pressure sores, which he are likely to develop since he does not have anyone to move him in his bed during the night.

What does all this have to do with euthanasia? 

We remember with sadness the case of Jean Truchon, who lived with a disability similar to that of Mr. Leclair. Truchon could not obtain enough services from the health system, and was finally euthanized after having "won" the Truchon-Gladu challenge to the then euthanasia law. 

In Truchon, Judge Christine Beaudoin ruled that the end-of-life requirement for obtaining euthanasia was unconstitutional. The Canadian and Quebec governments did not appeal the Truchon decision resulting in the Canadian government modifying the law so that people such as Mr. Truchon and possibly Mr. Leclair could be euthanized without being terminally ill. 

Canada's two-track euthanasia law has Track 1 for persons with a terminal condition and Track 2 for persons living with a grievous and irremediable medical condition. Track 2 euthanasia has been condemned by the UN Committee on Disability Rights: see the excellent press release by Dr. Heidi Janz and Jonathan Marchand here (https://www.ccdonline.ca/en/humanrights/endoflife/Media-Release-29Jan2020).

More articles on euthanasia for people with disabilities in Canada:

• Canadian government ignores UN scrutiny over euthanasia law (Read).
• United Nations Committee directs Canada to repeal Track 2 euthanasia deaths (Read).
• How euthanasia fails Canada's most vulnerable (Link).
• Shouldn't care come before euthanasia? (Link). 
• The International disability rights community is concerned with Canada's euthanasia law (Link).
• UN demands change: Canada must end MAiD for people without terminal illness (Link).