00:00:55.180I was scared that I was going to get really poorly and thinking, how will I cope?
00:00:59.300How will my family cope? How will I be cared for? How will I afford it? How badly will it hurt?
00:01:06.320How long will it last? Now, I don't know how long I will live. I will be on treatment for life,
00:01:15.040however long or short that may be. I, the moment, live between scans in nine to 12-week blocks of
00:01:22.880time. The last scan may show the disease is stable, but the next scan might show that it
00:01:28.080is growing again. If the disease is stable, the drug is working and we can carry on. Eventually
00:01:34.580the drug will stop working, the cancer will grow and we will have to try another drug
00:01:38.680and see if that works. At some point, we will either run out of drugs to try or I will be
00:01:43.820too poorly to tolerate them. Then I die. It could be months. It could be years. No one
00:01:51.320really knows. But in the campaign around this bill, it seems to me that it is being implied
00:01:57.160that a person with a terminal illness will have a dreadful, painful death unless they
00:02:04.480have access to assisted dying. And it's simply not true. Palliative care in the UK is excellent.
00:02:13.680Far too many people do not have access to palliative care that they need. But the idea
00:02:18.420that it is not possible to alleviate pain and discomfort is false. People, I, have been
00:02:26.420terrorised, with tales of people vomiting up their own faeces as though this is commonplace
00:02:31.860during death. It is irresponsible to scaremonger people like me into believing our deaths will be
00:02:38.800horrific, when all the evidence suggests that with access to good palliative care,
00:02:43.640deaths are on the whole gentle. The answer is not to terrify people and their families,
00:02:49.140it's to sort out palliative care and social care first. It seems interesting because this debate
00:02:55.180has been raging on in Canada since MAID was legalized in 2016. It has only ever expanded,
00:03:00.480including the debate around expansion to mental health, children, and other situations that were
00:03:06.240not originally thought possible when MAID was first discussed in earlier political debates.
00:03:12.220well i'm joined with subject matter expert amanda actman amanda what's your reaction
00:03:26.560to what happened in the uk last week well the uk has rejected assisted suicide in this latest
00:03:33.040attempt to legalize it and this has been a recurring attempt within the uk and so what's
00:03:40.680very exciting about this is while many countries like canada australia and the new zealand and new
00:03:47.640zealand have some form of assisted suicide or euthanasia the uk has said no and so that shows
00:03:54.280that this is not a foregone conclusion this is not a progressive march in which every country
00:04:00.360is destined countries can still say no and reject this policy which always signals a defeat not
00:04:09.400progress? Well, it was a very narrow vote. It was 286 to 270, I believe. And of course,
00:04:15.700this was introduced by Labour, but also had Labour opposition. It seems that the UK political
00:04:20.340system right now is, I mean, quite similar to Canada, but in terms of the political outlook
00:04:24.300of the parties right now, more members than here, perhaps, would be more willing to vote against
00:04:30.840their governing party on issues of conscience, especially in the case of the terminally ill
00:04:36.500member of parliament that we covered in our previous coverage of this event who stood up
00:04:42.720in the house and made her claim against a maid and against assisted suicide and spoke very briefly
00:04:50.320about the alternative progress that needs to happen in the UK healthcare system as well
00:04:55.680and targeting you know health supports and mental health supports and a number of other issues that
00:05:01.840And frankly, many people believe this should be looked at before assisted suicide.
00:05:06.260So I just want to get your idea in terms of, you know, there is a nuanced debate there.
00:05:10.760There are about a dozen and a half MPs that made the difference there.
00:05:14.840But even if it were to be passed, what does that say to you?
00:05:19.040The fact that there is quite a balance and quite a nuance in the UK, Commonwealth, European nation.
00:05:25.220What does that say for the rest of the Western world?
00:05:27.120Do you think that there could possibly be a trend heading in the opposite direction?
00:05:31.120I'm really glad that you mentioned that because even in societies that do not have legal euthanasia regimes, all the underlying issues are present.
00:05:41.800The fear of being a burden, lack of access to adequate palliative care, the social isolation.
00:05:47.120The UK several years ago inaugurated a minister of loneliness and someone still holds that role.
00:05:53.500role. And so we have all of these crises just beneath the surface. And seeing how close the
00:06:00.920vote is shows that this is a real point of contention within public discourse and within
00:06:07.240all of our lives. There's a lot of sympathy for those who are suffering, and rightly so. And it's
00:06:12.760not that one side has sympathy for the suffering and the other side doesn't. But the question is,
00:06:17.500how do we respond to the sick and suffering person mindful of course that one day that sick
00:06:23.380and suffering person will be us what kind of culture are we going to create and so while it
00:06:29.520is a moment in my opinion and estimation to celebrate this UK rejection of assisted suicide
00:06:35.380I don't want us to rest on our laurels too long because the cultural conversation and debate
00:07:04.660I remember very well personally the Telegraph's coverage of the veteran,
00:07:08.600the wounded veteran who was disabled from the hip down and who required a wheelchair and wheelchair
00:07:14.600elevator in her house as well. And thanks to the fact that the Veterans Affairs Canada wasn't
00:07:19.380able to provide those services in a timeline that was reasonable for her needs, there was a
00:07:25.380conversation that deemed inappropriate from a Veterans Affairs employee in Canada recommending
00:07:30.620MAID as an option. So given that dynamic that you've covered, how does the legalization of
00:07:37.260made fundamentally alter how our health care system responds to such vulnerable people.
00:07:44.440I mean, if this were passed in the UK, what kind of outcomes would you imagine given what's
00:07:49.820happened in Canada? What I would say is that simply having criteria itself is the problem.
00:07:55.520Many people would say, don't want assisted suicide, just don't ask for it. But once you
00:07:59.940create criteria by which some people qualify for a state-sponsored suicide, some people qualify for
00:08:06.960premature end to their life, then simply fitting the criteria is itself dehumanizing, is itself
00:08:13.460disqualifying of a certain regard. And it changes how we look at people. It changes how people see
00:08:19.340themselves. I engage seniors every single day. And when they share about how it makes them feel
00:08:25.560to be knowing that they fit the criteria for a hastened end to their life, that doctors might
00:08:34.120not be fighting for them, but they might be antagonizing them by how they look at them
00:08:40.540as being perhaps better off dead, that has a toll. And better off dead, I should say, is also
00:08:49.980a title of a documentary by Liz Carr, a UK campaigner against assisted suicide, who did
00:08:57.880brilliant job exposing the toll that these policies have on people living with disabilities and really
00:09:06.120this affects all of us because as many in the disability rights community insist we are all
00:09:11.560simply temporarily able-bodied tabs so we might think oh this is an us and them kind of dynamic
00:09:19.560no this is a matter of social solidarity this is a matter of communion with those who suffer
00:09:25.960We all one day will be in a position of vulnerability and weakness.
00:09:30.880And how we are met, how we are looked at in that moment is very, very significant.
00:09:37.300In terms of these arguments of life, whether it be the issue of abortion or be it the issue of MAID and assisted suicide programs,
00:09:44.360there are the moral principles on the side of the alternative and the side of the conservative tradition.
00:09:50.420I'm more curious about the moderate arguments that have been made.
00:09:53.780In terms of the political standpoint here, those moderate arguments are often the most effective ones when it comes to getting legislation passed, because it brings a certain level of compassion while also bringing a certain level of capitulation.
00:10:07.900Of course, these are very divisive arguments regardless.
00:10:11.140In the UK, the bill argued a strict six-month terminal illness rule and a self-administration requirement that would have prevented it from expanding, according to its argument.
00:10:22.840From your perspective, analyzing Canada's transformation of MAID from Bill C-14 to the
00:10:29.160track to expansion, why would you argue in your view that legal safeguards in euthanasia regimes
00:10:35.000are inherently unstable and are inevitable to expand? Because once legalized, euthanasia cannot
00:10:41.800remain limited but will be expanded on the grounds of equality. If euthanasia or assisted suicide is
00:10:48.940a reasonable and compassionate means to alleviate suffering why wouldn't you allow it for more and
00:10:54.120more people it becomes a matter of equality and each expansion in Canada has been on the grounds
00:10:59.680of equality so that when someone is suffering at end of life we know that there's also many people
00:11:06.140who suffer throughout life and not necessarily only in the dying process and so that was the
00:11:11.980grounds by which euthanasia was expanded to those whose deaths are not reasonably foreseeable and
00:11:17.680similarly there are people who suffer mentally as much if not more than those who suffer physical
00:11:24.960physically and that was the basis on which again on the grounds of equality euthanasia was expanded
00:11:32.400on the basis of mental illness as a sole underlying condition and that law passed in 2021 the
00:11:38.240disability expansion and the mental illness as a sole condition expansion now we know that mental
00:11:43.280illness expansion has not taken effect its implementation has been delayed year after year
00:11:48.400but we've seen this massive societal shift whereby on the grounds of equality what seemed to be
00:11:54.560reasonable in a euthanasia society is a widening of the criteria to allow more and more people to
00:12:01.440avail themselves of this option which is a premature end of life now in the uk as in many
00:12:09.520other jurisdictions it's been widely noted that prognoses of terminal prognoses are so often wrong
00:12:17.680when we're talking six 12 months out doctors fail to make those predictions about half the time
00:12:24.480they get it wrong those prognoses so it's a it's a real guessing game now if a person is in the
00:12:32.320the final days or hours doctors have quite a good sense they can be quite precise and actor
00:12:38.960accurate in the dying process months out i meet people every single day who tell me the
00:12:45.360prognosis they were given and how long they've outlived it and how easily they could have been
00:12:50.240given up on or how they could have uh surrendered their life needlessly and prematurely so we have
00:12:57.680to be very mindful of the error there of the expansion on the grounds of equality and of the
00:13:04.000likelihood that the self-administration requirement will be dropped too. This is the big difference
00:13:10.680between Canada and the U.S. and why Canada has such higher rates of MAID. Because in Canada,
00:13:18.020MAID, medical aid in dying, was intended to encompass both euthanasia, where the doctor or
00:13:23.940nurse administers directly, and assisted suicide, where a person may self-administer. Well, in 2024,
00:13:31.420100% of the cases of MAID 100% documented in the federal government's Health Canada report
00:13:39.860all 16,499 people who died by MAID in 2024 were directly euthanized not one person chose to
00:13:49.640self-administer so once we create that option which again gets ushered in on the grounds of
00:13:55.560equality because if someone's not able to self-administer they need someone to do it for
00:13:59.840them. This is how we see in real time, not speculatively, not in a textbook, but in our
00:14:06.920own society, the reckless expansion of euthanasia almost without limit. A major point contention in
00:14:13.240the UK was whether traditional hospices could remain assisted dying free zones. You know,
00:14:19.560in Canada, we've seen intense battles over faith-based healthcare facilities being forced
00:14:23.180made on them, where of course they wouldn't be comfortable given their convictions. Religiously
00:14:29.640speaking. What does the healthcare system lose in terms of freedom and choice when it no longer
00:14:34.680protects completely made free spaces for patients? One of the reasons why I think the UK has been
00:14:40.220able to stave off assisted suicide as long as it has is because of the legacy of Dame Cicely Saunders,
00:14:46.420the founder of the modern palliative care and hospice movement. She founded a beautiful hospice
00:14:51.580called St. Christopher's in the UK and has this whole philosophy of palliative care where you
00:14:56.680matter because you're you and you matter until the last moment of your life. We're going to do
00:15:02.000everything we can to help you live well until you die. Sounds good. And we have lots of places that
00:15:08.500would like to continue practicing like this in the U.S., in Canada, but increasingly euthanasia,
00:15:15.140assisted dying, whatever we might call it, is encroaching on these institutions and is
00:15:21.540threatening their freedom to remain made free spaces why because as soon as you provide a
00:15:27.820counterpoint as soon as you provide an alternative where we say we will not we will not participate
00:15:33.780we will not be complicit it it is a reproach it is an inherent reproach and rebuff of a pro-death
00:15:42.720operation and so many people cannot abide the plurality of options even within a free society
00:15:50.460And we see this totalizing of the pro-euthanasia mindset that is not content that euthanasia can be provided almost anywhere in people's homes, in public parks, in hospitals.
00:16:03.840No, but insists on suing a Catholic hospital like St. Paul's in Vancouver because they will not provide it on site, even though there's a maid corridor to a death site next door.
00:16:16.560Somehow that's not sufficient for the euthanasia lobby. This shows that this is not about freedom and choice. This is about a totalitarian mindset to make euthanasia so ubiquitous that there's hardly a counterpoint to rebuff it.
00:16:32.760You know, I've heard from critics against MAID and the culture behind MAID,
00:16:38.100and I've even heard it described as a culture of death by Conservative MP Arnold Viersen,
00:16:42.780who is among that Social Conservative Bank and the Conservative Party that would be more likely to resist.
00:16:47.840Of course, you have others like Timmeri Anson and Andrew Lawton as well, who provide opposition.
00:16:52.800But, you know, in your own words, you've stated that Canada doesn't actually have a culture of death,