Canada’s euthanasia regime has been back in the spotlight this week after a video interview went viral, featuring Canadian man, Roger Foley, who said that he’s been offered euthanasia “multiple times” by a health system that would rather get rid of him than offer him the care he needs.
Mr Foley, according to his website, suffers with cerebellar ataxia, a neurological condition that causes him substantial suffering. Despite this, thanks to Canada’s Medical Assistance in Dying – ‘MAiD’ being the dystopian acronym – euthanasia programme, rather than figure out the best way to treat Mr Foley and others like him, it is becoming increasingly common on the Canadian healthcare scene to nudge people deemed inconvenient in an altogether darker direction.
It is no isolated problem, either. According to the Canadian government’s annual report on MAiD, 13,241 people died by euthanasia in 2022, which represented a 31.4% increase on 2021.
Euthanasia now accounts for 4.1% of all deaths in Canada and, in some parts of the country, makes up even 7 or 8% of deaths.
Despite the large and growing scale of the problem, normalisation ever-threatens to put a lid on the euthanasia discussion in Canada, as both practitioners and populace are dulled by its ongoing presence in their country.
The woman who conducted the interview with Mr Foley, however, is striving to ensure that this conversation doesn’t end, and that those struggling against the devaluation of their lives are heard. Amanda Achtman, an activist, cultural entrepreneur and scholar recently created ‘Dying to Meet You’: “a project of cultural renewal to humanize our conversation on suffering, death, meaning, and hope”.
“Now we do not so much have a culture of death as we have death without culture. That’s why we need a better cultural conversation – one that explores death as an occasion for discovering who and what we truly are. I am convinced that artistic beauty, humanizing storytelling, and edifying examples are critical to restoring our cultural health when it comes to our experiences of death and dying,” her project’s website further reads.
She does this through writing and speaking about life issues, as well as running events and creating short films, as she tries to change Canada’s culture one story at a time.
Speaking to Gript, Ms Achtman said that her current efforts to revitalise Canada’s sense of life came about during the pandemic years, as she worked for a conservative member of the Canadian parliament.
“At the time, the Liberal Government was working to expand euthanasia on the basis of disability and mental illness, and we were working to oppose that. Not even five years after legalization, the Government was eroding the so-called safeguards that had initially been deemed essential,” Ms Achtman said.
“This goes to show that, once euthanasia is legalized, it will not remain limited. That’s because, as long as euthanasia is regarded as a legitimate means to relieve suffering, then there is no reason to withhold this relief from wider and wider demographics.
“Thus, euthanasia is continually being expanded in Canada on the grounds of equality. In fact, this means that more and more Canadians are being given up on much too early and deprived of the supports that they need and deserve to live,” she said.
Her government’s efforts to expand euthanasia got her thinking about what more she could do to engage with the culture, to “present a more attractive alternative vision”.
“And so, I made a New Year’s resolution on January 1, 2021 to blog about death and dying every single day for the entire year in a way that was edifying and ultimately oriented toward hope. The blog got a lot of traction and was very meaningful for me personally. Since then, the initiative has developed into a broader cultural project. Now, Dying to Meet You involves a mix of writing, speaking, organizing pop up-style community events, and producing short films all in an effort to prevent euthanasia and encourage hope.”
That being a long-term project, what can certainly be said in the short-term is that the output of the Dying to Meet You project has kickstarted conversation both within and without Canada. Ms Achtman’s most recent interview with Mr Foley drew commentary from thousands of people, not just in their homeland, but across the world.
In the video, Mr Foley describes himself as bedridden, suffering from severe pain levels every day. Without medication, he can’t function. Asked by Ms Achtman whether he’s been offered euthanasia, he responds, “Yeah, multiple times”.
“One time, he [a nurse] asked me, ‘Do you have any thoughts of self-harm?’ I’m honest with him and tell him, like, I do think about ending my life because of what I’m going through, being prevented from the resources I need to live safely back at home. And, from out of nowhere, he just pulls out: ‘Well, if you don’t get self-directed funding, you can always apply for assisted – you know what I mean?”
Mr Foley said that he felt “pillaged,” after the suggestion, and that it “completely traumatised” him.
His is not the only horror story the new Canadian approach to healthcare has to offer, with Ms Achtman pointing me in the direction of a number of stunning cases that indicate the direction the world’s nicest country – or so went the stereotype – has taken:
- A Canadian veteran and former Paralympian told a parliamentary committee that a caseworker from the Veterans Affairs Canada (VAC) offered her euthanasia a week after the veterans affairs minister confirmed that at least four other veterans were offered the same thing. “I was completely shocked and in despair,” retired Cpl. Christine Gauthier told Canadian news outlet CTV, adding, “it is remotely just what they’re doing: exhausting us to the point of no return.”
- Another case saw a quadriplegic Quebec man, Normand Meunier, who arrived at a hospital with a respiratory virus weeks later emerge with a severe bedsore that would eventually lead him to seek and get MAiD.
- Dan Quayle, 52, diagnosed with oesophageal cancer opted for MAiD after waiting for chemotherapy and treatment that didn’t come fast enough.
There are many, many more cases, but these give a sense of the desperate situations people find themselves in that drive them into ready and waiting, euthanising arms. As a result, Ms Achtman says that euthanasia constitutes a “national crisis”.
“Euthanasia in Canada is a national crisis, and yet many Canadians are still not aware of the extent of it. More Canadians have been euthanized by doctors and nurses in hospitals, homes, and even our national parks since 2016 than the total number of Canadians who died during the entire Covid pandemic to date. And, that’s according to the federal Government’s own statistics,” she said.
Even with that the case, she argues that the number of euthanasia deaths is likely even higher than reported given that doctors are specifically directed to falsify the cause of death on death certificates.
She reported on this in 2022, when she wrote that it may soon be hard to keep track of Canada’s euthanasia deaths given the “deliberate obfuscation and falsification of euthanasia records”.
Ontario’s College of Surgeons and Physicians, acknowledging that MAiD causes death in its definition for MAiD, revealed while soliciting feedback for a draft policy, that it instructs physicians that when they’re completing the medical certificate of death, that they “must list the illness, disease, or disability leading to the request for MAID as the cause of death; and must not make any reference to MAID or the medications administered on the certificate” (emphasis Ms Achtman’s).
“Here we have the deliberate directive by a governing professional body to falsify medical records,” Ms Achtman wrote on that occasion. “A doctor’s administration of midazolam, propofol, and rocuronium is undeniably the cause of his or her patient’s premature death. But soon, we may no longer know the number of Canadians being euthanized because of the host of other ‘causes’ being listed on death certificates to mask the widespread death-by-doctor.”
Another problem, though, Ms Achtman tells me, is that “our mainstream and government-funded media in Canada glorifies euthanasia” and that it has undermined the doctor-patient relationship.
“As with suicide, the glorification of assisted suicide in the media contributes to a contagion effect. Euthanasia doctors are publishing memoirs and going on speaking tours about how rewarding they find their work to be,” she said.
“Euthanasia is doing serious damage to the doctor-patient relationship. Even if a person does not request euthanasia for him or herself, the sheer knowledge that other people with their condition are ‘eligible’ to be killed by a physician makes them feel like they have a target on their back. Doctors and nurses are also raising euthanasia with patients unsolicited. We all know how vulnerable we are in healthcare settings.
“Having euthanasia suggested already ‘kills’ the patient inside. It makes the patient feel like their life is worthless. This is why I feel the need to dedicate my life to preventing people from being discarded, dismissed, or discounted,” she said.
Despite the bleak outlook, Ms Achtman described herself as “full of hope,” which is certainly the tone she strikes in her work with Dying to Meet You.
“The more we give voice to those most affected by legal euthanasia, the sooner people will recognize it as a form of dehumanization in our time, an injustice we can no longer permit, a violation of human dignity to which we cannot turn a blind eye. Most proponents of euthanasia are only thinking of themselves and their own pain. In an effort to assert agency and control, they advocate euthanasia for whenever they think they might like to avail themselves to an easy exit.
“But, the fact that we, as a society, devise criteria for who ‘qualifies’ for a premature end to life, implies a social dimension and reflects a society’s judgments on the value of life. The request for euthanasia is not so much an expression of a desire to die as it is the expression of a disappointment. It’s crucial that we take these disappointments seriously and respond in a way that is adequate to the person, meeting their needs instead of discarding their life,” she said.
Canada, along with other countries that have legalised euthanasia, provide a valuable, if grim, warning for Ireland as it continues with its deliberations over whether or not to introduce the practice, deliberations that lean towards a liberalisation.
The Oireachtas Committee on Assisted Dying released its report March 20 which recommended primarily that Ireland legislate for assisted suicide, despite medical bodies, such as the Royal College of Physicians of Ireland (RCPI), reiterating their opposition to the introduction of any legislation supportive of assisted suicide in Ireland “because it is contrary to best medical practice”.
Only time will tell whether voices from across the ocean like Mr Foley’s and Ms Achtman’s are heard.
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