Canada’s Liberalized Assisted Death Laws: Manitoba Woman Chose Assisted Suicide Due to Lack of Home Care

People rally against Bill C-14, the medically assisted dying bill, during a protest organized by the Euthanasia Prevention Coalition on Parliament Hill in Ottawa on June 1, 2016. The Canadian Press/Justin Tang

A Manitoba woman received medical assistance in dying on Oct. 3 because she said she was unable to receive adequate medical care at home and did not want to move into a health-care facility as an alternative.

Canada has the most permissive assisted death law in the world, and will be expanding eligibility criteria further next year.

Sathya Dhara Kovac, a resident of Winnipeg, suffered from amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), a nervous system disease that progressively affects nerve cells in the brain and spinal cord and eventually causes loss of muscle control.

“Ultimately it was not a genetic disease that took me out, it was a system,” Kovac wrote in her obituary, published Oct. 5.

According to her friend and support worker Shayla Brantnall, Kovac, 44, made the decision to receive medical assistance in dying, or MAiD, because her efforts to get more help with basic needs at home failed, and she didn’t want to live in a facility, CBC reported.

There have been increasing concerns in Canada about the expanding scope of MAiD, rather than helping the vulnerable population improve their lives.

The Conservative Party recently raised an alarm when reports emerged that a Veteran Affairs worker recommended MAiD to a veteran seeking treatment for his injuries.

Alex Schadenberg, executive director of Euthanasia Prevention Coalition Canada, previously told The Epoch Times that MAiD is harming Canada’s most vulnerable, adding that he’s personally aware of many different cases of people who turn to MAiD rather than receive proper care.

“It’s abandonment. So you’re in a bad situation, and instead of receiving care ... euthanasia is the only real option you can apply for and get,” he said.

Diverted Resources

Some doctors are concerned that the poor state of Canada’s palliative health care is causing people to apply for assisted suicide, a special parliamentary joint committee heard on Oct. 7.

“There were some situations where I saw patients that I thought could benefit from palliative care in that the treatment, the palliation, that they had received was suboptimal and that we could optimize it,” said José Pereira, head of the University of Ottawa’s palliative care division.

“I was made to feel that I was obstructing access to it [palliative care].”

Pereira also said he has observed health-care resources in his region being diverted from palliative care to MAiD assignments.

“There have been nurses and nurse practitioners assigned to MAiD assessments and therefore not enough health-care professionals to assess patients for their palliative care needs and address palliative care,” he said.

“To paraphrase,” said Conservative MP Michael Barrett, “you would say that end-of-life resources that are going to MAiD are, in some cases, being done so at the expense of palliative care offerings?”

“Yes, that’s true,” replied Pereira. “I would agree with that, in some cases.”

Expanding Eligibility

The federal government legalized MAiD in 2016 and revised the legislation in March 2021 to eliminate the requirement that an applicant’s death be “reasonably foreseeable” in order to be approved.

Canada’s MAiD legislation now allows adults who have an incurable physical illness, are undergoing “intolerable” suffering, and be in an “advanced state of irreversible decline” to receive assisted suicide.

Starting in March 2023, Canadians whose only medical condition is a mental illness will also be eligible to receive MAiD.