Canada Seeks To Legalize Assisted Suicide For Mental Illness
In the latest attempt to expand Canada’s Medical Assistance In Dying (MAID) program, the far-left Canadian government is planning to legalize assisted suicide for people whose only health problem is mental illness.
Initially, assisted suicide was only meant for people with severe, debilitating health problems who were terminally ill and in significant pain. However, Canada quickly began expanding their MAID program — which now allows people to apply for assisted suicide “if they have a serious disability or illness causing them to live in an advanced state of irreversible decline and enduring physical or psychological suffering,” according to Breitbart News.
The program currently does not include people whose sole condition is mental illness — though they have passed a law to expand MAID to these people, which will go into effect in March. The new law will first have to be scrutinized by a special parliamentary committee on MAID before the mentally ill will be allowed to have the government-controlled healthcare system help them commit suicide.
According to a report from the Toronto Star, the category of people whose sole medical problem is mental illness also includes individuals with a substance use disorder — which has led to many people expressing concern that Canada has gone “too far.”
One such critic is conservative Member of Parliament (MP) Ed Fast — who proposed legislation to prevent people with mental illness from having access to MAID. He has expressed concern that the Canadian government has normalized “assisted death as an alternative treatment option.”
“Have we gone too far and too fast with Canada’s assisted suicide program? Will we evolve into a culture of death as the preferred option for those who suffer from mental illness or will we choose life?” Fast said in a speech.
However, Fast’s bill failed in the House of Commons — with the Liberal majority voting against protecting mentally ill people from being sold the option of assisted suicide.
Fast and several other critics have also cited stories of people requesting MAID for problems like being poor or having inadequate housing — as well as one instance of a Paralympian being offered euthanasia when she asked for the healthcare system to provide her with a stairlift.
Despite stories like this, Canadian officials have insisted that there are safeguards in the program to prevent the program from being pushed on people without legitimate reasons to commit suicide.
“I want to assure Canadians that it isn’t just the case that you can walk off the street and seek MAID if you’re feeling depressed,” then-Justice Minister David Lametti said in a speech late last year.
The MAID committee’s final report in February also recommended that the committee should be re-established “to verify the degree of preparedness attained for a safe and adequate application of MAID” in cases involving individuals with mental illness.
However, many people believe that the program amounts to “eugenics” — and are concerned about the repeated expansion of assisted suicide in Canada.
