Juno News - Stopping the expansion of MAiD in Canada

00:00:00.000 there is as you know this ongoing debate in ottawa and it's a debate being uh under well

00:00:14.540 it's underway across the country i think probably more so elsewhere than it is in the nation's

00:00:18.520 capital on assisted suicide the government has committed to a very ideological approach

00:00:23.920 that is vastly expanding eligibility for what they call made the euphemism medical assistance and

00:00:30.980 dying and one of these expansions includes the ability for someone to access this when they're

00:00:39.320 dealing not with an irremediable physical medical condition but someone who's dealing only with a

00:00:46.020 mental health condition and that is so key here because sometimes the symptom of a mental illness

00:00:53.300 is wanting to end your life so how can the so-called cure or treatment to that condition also

00:00:59.640 be ending your life and this is near and dear to my heart i have shared this on the show before for

00:01:05.720 some of you you may not have heard it i am a suicide survivor when i was younger in 2010 i had been going

00:01:12.060 through for several years a mental health struggle mainly depression and i very nearly succeeded in

00:01:18.360 ending my own life and it was my greatest failure and it's a failure i'm tremendously proud of because

00:01:25.300 all the things i have in life since then my career my life my friends my wife has come about because i

00:01:32.140 found a path and a hope that i did not know was possible and it is heartbreaking on a very personal

00:01:38.380 level set aside the policy of it when i see a government so committed to this idea that ending your life with

00:01:44.720 the state's assistant is a right that no one has the ability to interfere with because i know it's a

00:01:51.880 regime that if it were in place in 2010 i would have been very motivated to avail myself of and the

00:01:58.440 doctors the care workers that told me no you don't get to end your life we're going to help you

00:02:04.320 would have been compelled to do the opposite to assist me with what was a very flawed and ill approach

00:02:13.940 now this is a lengthy wind up to a private members bill that's been introduced by conservative mp ed

00:02:20.280 fast it was introduced in may but it's actually this week getting a hearing which i'm very grateful

00:02:25.640 for it's called bill c 314 there was a press conference about it just a couple of blocks from

00:02:30.840 where i am earlier this week alex schattenberg is the executive director of the euthanasia prevention

00:02:36.240 coalition and joins me now alex it's good to talk to you what does this private members bill do

00:02:41.680 well actually the private members bill is very clear it would just reverse what was already passed

00:02:48.920 by bill c7 in march of 2021 so bill c7 was the bill that expanded euthanasia and assisted suicide

00:02:56.280 of canada we call made it expanded it to include people who are not terminally ill one of the things

00:03:01.360 that bill did is it allowed for euthanasia for mental illness alone but they put a two-year

00:03:06.480 moratorium on that and you might remember last december when the government was getting a lot of

00:03:12.340 heat over the issue of people with disabilities who were dying by a maid because of homelessness and

00:03:19.540 poverty and inability to get medical treatment etc and these stories were coming at them one at a time

00:03:25.340 consistently that they decided to delay the maid for mental illness until march of 2024 so ed fast bill

00:03:34.180 would actually end that prospect and say that it does not uh it is not part of the law to allow

00:03:40.120 maid for mental illness alone this has been i mean obviously there's a an ideological aversion to

00:03:45.960 assisted suicide in general among a lot of social conservatives in canada and some other people as

00:03:51.060 well the mental illness criterion has galvanized a lot of people that do not identify as pro-life don't

00:03:58.940 identify as social conservative we're talking about disability activists mental health activists a lot of

00:04:03.940 medical providers that are at the very minimum concerned uh at another level completely outraged

00:04:10.460 by this but even so the government has been unflinching it's like they've said well we'll

00:04:14.560 consult we'll talk about it but they really haven't shown any signs of walking this back have they

00:04:19.200 no they haven't and in fact uh the canadian association of uh of the suicide prevention

00:04:25.920 organizations they're against uh you know made for mental illness uh in our own press conference we had

00:04:31.740 two young women give very similar stories to your story talking about you know the times they went

00:04:37.140 through when they were you know one was uh hospitalized for over a month and and had constant relapses into

00:04:43.280 deep deep deep depression and her story was well if you had offered it to me then i would have taken it

00:04:48.280 because i wanted death another one uh attempted suicide unsuccessfully thankfully seven times and said

00:04:56.480 you know if you had offered me uh medical aid and dying i would have taken it in second because i

00:05:00.580 thought death was my only option i felt like i was caught into this deep dark place and i couldn't

00:05:06.840 get out any other way and yet of course now they are both much better but the point of it is is that

00:05:12.060 uh ed fast bill i really like because as much as i'm opposed to euthanasia and assisted suicide in

00:05:17.460 general uh he has just carved out this part of the uh the legislation saying no to that because

00:05:23.900 clearly canadians oppose that a recent poll done by um angus reed showed that uh 82 percent of

00:05:31.000 canadians thought that this should not happen until we improve mental health supports but only 28 percent

00:05:36.620 of canadians actually supported the concept of euthanasia for a mental illness alone yeah and actually

00:05:42.720 you raise an important point there and i know you're not you know you don't work for ed fast you're

00:05:46.660 an advocate on the issue but but ed has done something very important here because when c7

00:05:51.140 came up the problem was this was really an issue that was being debated within a broader context

00:05:56.740 of changes and that was sort of the excuse to just pass it whereas if you deal with an isolation

00:06:02.220 someone who believes that uh this exception uh you know for mental illness uh should be taken out or

00:06:08.800 left in like you actually have to defend that issue alone you have to defend that slice of it alone and

00:06:14.600 it's very difficult for private members bill to get a hearing this one actually is by virtue of

00:06:18.860 where it is in the queue right yeah so it's having its second hour debate actually today uh the fact

00:06:24.260 is is that you might remember the history of it is that bill c7 when it came out originally did not

00:06:28.700 allow made for mental illness and then what happened is certain group of senators got together saying

00:06:34.700 that they would not support the changes to the legislation if it didn't include that so what

00:06:41.300 happened and went back to parliament and parliament then passed it but i see a lot of them never even

00:06:45.740 debated it they didn't even think that this is what they were doing they didn't understand what

00:06:50.300 i'm also concerned about is this issue of democracy now why am i saying this there's a lot of members

00:06:54.800 of parliament who are saying you know i agree with ed fast but i have to support with my i have to vote

00:06:59.960 with my liberal party well this is a private members bill it's got nothing to do with liberal policy

00:07:05.180 it's got nothing to do with a budget or anything like that it has to do with a private member's

00:07:09.720 business so therefore there should be clearly a free vote but the liberals and the ndp they have 0.88

00:07:14.700 been uh how would you say uh they've been whipping the vote on this issue and that to me is ridiculous

00:07:19.960 if you consider the fact of where canadians are at and how canadians simply oppose this

00:07:24.180 let me ask you about the the other issue of this that we see in canada which is increasingly

00:07:32.680 stories of made being offered to people who are not dealing with mental illness or physical illness

00:07:38.400 people that are dealing with housing insecurity people that are dealing with poverty and and

00:07:42.880 you know i i was talking earlier on about rising cost of living problems about grocery store prices

00:07:47.860 these are contributing to uh these broader social ills that we know are at least in a handful of cases

00:07:55.000 more than i would say we can call isolated uh converting to people being recommended or seeking out

00:08:01.220 assisted dying now the reason i bring that up is because that the law as i understand it and as i read it

00:08:07.400 does not allow that this is practitioners of this going above and beyond what the regulations and the

00:08:13.540 law says and and i'm concerned that we already have this attitude in parts of the medical community

00:08:20.800 that doesn't really care about legal restrictions it seems and i'm wondering what your take on that is

00:08:26.060 well first of all there is a small group of doctors who do a lot of euthanasia medically and dying

00:08:33.060 there are some that do a little bit of it but there's a small group that do a very many of them

00:08:38.500 and you see that in some of the articles but what happened is is that they actually technically allow

00:08:42.380 this and the reason is is that they uh bill c7 when it got rid of the uh the type of a terminal

00:08:48.780 illness requirement it led to the fact that essentially what you need now is to have an

00:08:53.140 irremediable medical condition because they say you have to be suffering but as you know andrew i if you

00:08:58.420 tell me you're suffering i can't tell you you're not suffering so there's nothing objective about it

00:09:02.420 you can't you can't gauge that so well yeah men like suffer from like the cold uh or the flu in a way

00:09:08.420 that like some would argue is irremediable yeah yeah well you threw that in because your wife probably 1.00

00:09:13.700 reminded you of that but anyway the fact of it is is that uh you know the fact of it is is that if

00:09:18.660 you have an irremediable medical condition essentially means that people with disabilities

00:09:22.280 really do qualify almost all the time for medical aid and dying in canada and that's what's been

00:09:28.480 happening so these people who are going through really quite extreme poverty or homelessness or

00:09:33.200 a lot of them they had a situation where they were really having a hard time getting the medical

00:09:38.680 treatment they needed so that had to do with the access to our medical system which is also a whole

00:09:43.460 nother issue that we we uh we know is a serious problem anyway they were then saying i have no choice

00:09:49.740 because i cannot continue living this way so i will ask for euthanasia made they were being approved

00:09:55.780 based on their disability so they weren't being approved based on their poverty they were requesting

00:10:00.640 it based on their poverty or their homelessness or the inability inability to get their medical

00:10:04.980 treatment and there's a few other reasons that are all social issues uh serious social ills within

00:10:10.220 our our country then of course the thing of homelessness is just exploded and there's many reasons for

00:10:15.480 that and you could do multiple shows on that one but the fact of it is is that when you

00:10:19.660 getting such a high level of homelessness you can see how somebody with a disability who can't get

00:10:24.300 access to uh social housing because they have a limited income they're sick enough that they can't

00:10:29.520 work they can't get access to social housing uh they're in fear of ending up on the streets but

00:10:34.600 they do qualify for euthanasia so we can't get them a house but or a place to live but yeah we can kill 0.51

00:10:40.640 you and that's somehow going to be about freedom choice and autonomy which is of course the big joke of the

00:10:45.080 whole thing it's not about freedom choice and autonomy at all it's really about abandonment when it comes down to

00:10:49.640 it yeah it's uh heartbreaking all around i'm glad ed fast is who by the way i mean look i i don't know

00:10:55.180 ed fast all that well he's not exactly like a hard line social conservative culture war creator so he

00:11:01.320 crusader so he's actually probably one of the best people to put this forward because he's fairly

00:11:06.000 moderate and i uh it's it's unfortunate from what you've said that the other parties are not taking

00:11:10.620 it in in that uh tone and working with him on this but uh hopefully if we get the public pressure up

00:11:16.060 there that might be able to change alex schattenburg euthanasia prevention coalition thanks for coming

00:11:20.800 on alex thank you so much for having me thank you all right thanks for listening to the andrew

00:11:25.120 lawton show support the program by donating to true north at www.tnc.news

00:11:31.680 so

Juno News - October 07, 2023

Stopping the expansion of MAiD in Canada

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