COLUMN: Think Again – What offering MAID says about us

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 10/12/2022 (1432 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

“Give me liberty or give me death!” So said American revolutionary Patrick Henry back in 1775. It was a poetic way of expressing his desire for American independence.

Patrick Henry wanted freedom so badly that he was willing to die for his cause. While our Canadian Confederation of 1867 was a quieter affair then the American Revolution, there is little doubt that our founding fathers also wanted Canada to be a free country.

Unfortunately, the legalization of MAID (medical aid in dying) has led to a much different rallying cry in modern-day Canada. Our new mantra appears to be “Give me medically assisted death when I become a burden on society!” Not only does it lack Patrick Henry’s poetic cadence, but it also conveys a very different message.

Since the initial legalization of MAID in 2016, the federal government has been relentlessly loosening the safeguards around this procedure. No longer is it necessary for a patient’s death to be “reasonably foreseeable,” nor is there anything stopping doctors from proposing this option to their patients. Judging by the skyrocketing number of medically assisted deaths each year in Canada, MAID appears to be one medical procedure without an obscenely long waiting list.

To make matters worse, in just a few short months MAID will also become available for patients suffering from a mental illness. At this rate, Canada is well on track to become the assisted suicide capital of the world. This is not something to be proud of.

Last week, Canadian MPs heard the horrific testimony of Paralympian and veteran Christine Gauthier at a parliamentary committee. Gauthier testified that instead of providing her with the wheelchair ramp that she had been asking for since 2017, her caseworker proposed MAID as an option. The caseworker even offered to supply the MAID equipment for her.

Predictably, Canadian politicians reacted with outrage. NDP MP Rachel Blaney said she felt “overwhelmed” by what she heard from Gauthier. Not to be outdone, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau described this caseworker’s actions as “totally unacceptable.” He went on to say that his government was putting protocols in place to ensure this never happens again.

Of course, if the Liberals and NDP were concerned about MAID being used too often, they wouldn’t have consistently pushed to loosen restrictions on this procedure. The Liberals and their NDP coalition partners can’t on the one hand claim to be horrified that a caseworker offered MAID to a veteran while on the other hand enthusiastically endorsing MAID as an ethically acceptable option.

If MAID truly is a normal medical procedure, then there shouldn’t be any problem with caseworkers bringing it up with their clients. After all, one could argue that caseworkers would be remiss in their duties if they missed out on the opportunity to bring their client’s suffering to an end—and saved the government millions of dollars in healthcare costs to boot.

We need to take a step back and ask ourselves if we are comfortable with becoming a country where assisted suicide is not only permitted but celebrated. Even the euphemism MAID itself is a sign that we have become far too comfortable with letting doctors kill their patients. Last time I checked, doctors were supposed to heal their patients, not end their lives prematurely.

At a bare minimum, we need to stop the expansion of MAID. The last thing we need is to make assisted suicide even more available than it is right now. We can do better. Canada needs to become a country of life, not one of death.

No one should feel comfortable about the direction we are currently heading.

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Michael Zwaagstra is a high school teacher and a Steinbach city councillor. He can be reached at mzwaagstra@shaw.ca.