Canada: “No” to Euthanizing the Mentally Ill, “Yes” to Killing Those With Dementia

The Canadian government announced last week that its scheduled expansion of assisted suicide, also known as Medical Assistance in Dying (MAID), to the mentally ill will not take place. Instead, the government, headed by Liberal Prime Minister Mark Carney, is going to target those with dementia.

MAID Delayed

According to Global News:

The previous Liberal government passed legislation in 2021 that revised eligibility criteria for MAID, but gave an additional two-year extension for mental illness eligibility to allow for further study.

That 2023 deadline was extended three more times, with the expansion previously set to come into effect in March 2027.

However, the government encountered enough public opposition to the expansion that it created a parliamentary committee to study the matter. The committee’s June report recommended against proceeding with it.

On October 5, Justice Minister Sean Fraser announced the government would comply with that recommendation.

“Canada has made a decision not to move forward with the expansion that is scheduled in the Criminal Code of medical assistance in dying in circumstances where mental illness is the sole basis,” he said at a press conference.

The government, Fraser added, plans to introduce legislation to put the expansion on hold on “an indeterminate basis.”

Demented Design

The Liberals made it quite clear that their opposition to the expansion was based not on principle but on which way the political winds were blowing. Immediately after his press conference, Fraser and all but two of his fellow Liberals voted against Bill C-218, which would have codified a permanent ban on MAID for mental illness.

As LifeSiteNews pointed out, growing opposition to MAID expansion among Canadians, driven in part by “euthanasia horror stories” that have become “a staple of the international press,”

presented the Carney government with several sticky problems. Their most reliable base — older Canadians — are [sic] very supportive of euthanasia. The powerful and well-funded euthanasia lobby has been pulling every trick in the book to ensure that eligibility continues to expand. And, finally, simply voting for Conservative MP Tamara Jansen’s Bill C-218 … would be granting their opposition a powerful moral victory.

Instead, the Liberal government decided to play politics with the lives of the vulnerable.

Specifically, Fraser announced that, in addition to indefinitely postponing MAID expansion to the mentally ill, the government’s bill will “grant access to medical assistance in dying to people who have provided consent at a time when they still have capacity but know that they have been diagnosed with an illness that will take that capacity from them subsequently.”

Dutch Treatment

There are numerous reasons to oppose extending MAID to patients with such “advanced directives.”

From a legal standpoint, “euthanasia by advanced request is outside of the federal government[‘s] jurisdiction,” wrote LifeNews.com. “Every Canadian province has advanced directive laws based on their constitutional power over healthcare.”

Furthermore:

Euthanasia was originally legalized in Canada under the guise of being for mentally competent adults, who are capable of consenting and who freely “choose.” Euthanasia by advanced request undermines these basic principles.

Euthanasia by advance request means that a person, while competent, legally declares their “wish” to be killed, and if the person becomes incompetent, the person could then be killed, even though the person is not capable of consenting. Therefore euthanasia by advance request is euthanasia without consent. [Emphasis in original.]

These are not merely theoretical concerns. A decade ago, a doctor in the Netherlands attempted to euthanize a dementia patient who had signed an advanced directive when she was competent yet stated thrice in her less-than-competent state that she did not want to be killed. After the woman repeatedly resisted the lethal injection, the doctor drugged her coffee and started the procedure. When the woman awoke and struggled to avoid being killed, the doctor had the family restrain so her the procedure could be completed. A court not only cleared the doctor of all charges but also praised her for acting as she did.

National Review observed:

Dementia patients are the next target of the culture of death, with advocacy increasing to include such people in the killable caste. Euthanasia activists already push VSED — suicide by self-starvation — for patients so diagnosed and even want caregivers forced to refuse their patients food and water if the person had so ordered when competent. Once that idea is accepted by society, lethal injections will soon follow because it will be seen as more humane.

Artful Carney

So heinous are the Carney government’s desires — euthanizing the mentally ill (when it’s politically feasible) and the mentally incompetent — that even the United Nations has come out against them.

But the government is counting on the fact that, by introducing a bill indefinitely halting MAID expansion to the mentally ill while extending it to those with dementia — and doing so with very little time to act before the mental-illness expansion takes effect — it will force opponents of the mental-illness expansion to vote for the bill. As LifeSiteNews put it (emphasis in original):

In other words: Give us people with dementia, or people with mental illness are going to get hurt. This is one of the most disgusting plays in recent Canadian political history, full stop.

The Carney Liberals need to keep the euthanasia lobby happy. They do not want to admit that they have lost the moral argument. So instead, they are going to play a lethal game and bargain with the lives of the vulnerable.