Every Canadian Counts

It must continually be said that every decision to intentionally kill reflects a lack of love and care. Such decisions are necessarily be driven by misguided judgment connected to fear, isolation, lack of treatment or care, feeling mistakenly 'like a burden,' as though life were less important than caregiving. It is false compassion. On the latest developments on the euthanasia and assisted suicide front, @MLInstitute's @rljcoelho writes: "While it’s a relief that government will no longer approve MAID for mental illness, it is unconscionable that they will add advance requests." "In cases I reviewed on Ontario’s MAID Death Review Committee, depression, trauma and isolation often drove requests that were approved, sometimes with no psychiatric expertise consulted, because there was also an accompanying physical diagnosis. Excluding mental illness as a “sole” condition is a good start, but the move still leaves other problems unaddressed. A better fix would be to repeal Track 2, the expansion to persons with disabilities who are not dying, entirely, as the United Nations Committee on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities has urged." "Consent given in advance cannot be fully informed; it often rests on fear of the future, not lived experience. My father had dementia, and his days held joy, laughter, love and dignity that neither he nor I could have foreseen. Ontario’s review of dementia cases found requests for MAID can be driven by fear of future decline, families raising MAID repeatedly on a patient’s behalf. It also found 86 per cent of these patients had not even received palliative care before MAID." macdonaldlaurier.ca/ottawa-k…