Assisted Suicide Opponents Express Alarm Over Report Recommending MAID for ‘Mature Minors’

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

Opponents of expanding Medical Assistance in Dying (MAID) are expressing alarm about a new report with 23 recommendations, including that assisted suicide be offered to “mature minors” if they are facing a natural death that is “reasonably foreseeable.”

Titled “Medical Assistance in Dying in Canada: Choices for Canadians,” the report was tabled Feb. 15 by the Special Joint Committee on Medical Assistance in Dying. The committee was formed in May 2021 as part of legislative requirements to review existing MAID law, and so far has held 36 meetings, listened to almost 150 witnesses, and received more than 350 briefs.

The report said it heard “a mix of views” about whether MAID should be offered to minors under 18, and recommended that the government establish a requirement that the parents or guardians of a mature minor be “consulted” during the assessment process for assisted suicide. It said however that “the will of a minor who is found to have the requisite decision-making capacity ultimately take priority.”

It also suggested the government should, within five years, “undertake consultations” with minors on the topic of assisted suicide, and conduct “research into the views and experiences of minors with respect to MAID,” including “minors with terminal illnesses, minors with disabilities, minors in the child welfare system and Indigenous minors.”

Mike Schouten, director of advocacy with the Association for Reformed Political Action (ARPA), says the current legislation does not protect the vulnerable.

“In seven years, Canada has gone from suicide being illegal, to one of the most expansive regimes in the world” offering physician-assisted suicide, he told The Epoch Times.

In a brief submitted to the committee, ARPA, a Christian grassroots political organization, said offering assisted suicide is “fundamentally different from any other medical service.”

“Advising someone to obtain chemotherapy or pain medication is not a crime, but advising or encouraging someone to end their own life is still a crime,” the brief said.

The committee’s report also said the government should implement some quality and standardization protocols for MAID services offered across the country, and set standards to assess requests for the procedure.

Another recommendation was that the government “increase awareness of the importance of engaging with First Nations, Inuit and Métis on the subject of MAID,” and allow advance requests for assisted suicide.

Safeguards

On Feb. 2, the government announced it would introduce legislation to temporarily delay expanding assisted suicide to mentally ill patients for one year.

Ray Pennings, executive vice president of the think tank Cardus, told The Epoch Times in an email that the government hasn’t seriously assessed current safeguards for medically assisted suicide, and has not given due consideration to whether Canadians facing poverty, disability, or other conditions have enough support to “live with dignity” instead of choosing to die.

“Is Canada creating a right to suicide? How well do existing safeguards protect vulnerable Canadians?” he said. He noted there are also moral and ethical considerations and questions about the availability of palliative care.

“Have we thought through the implications of sending the message to thousands of disabled, discouraged, and otherwise disadvantaged Canadians that their neighbours might think we are better off without them?” he said.

According to Pennings, the message is prevalent that assisted suicide is the answer to suffering, but there are people who would “thrive and prosper with encouragement or other help.” He said the government needs to make palliative care universally available.

No Canadian should be looking at medically assisted suicide “because of a lack of housing, insufficient income or inadequate support for physical disabilities or mental illness,” he added.

The committee noted that palliative care is not a prerequisite to access or receive assisted suicide, but recommended that the government increase funding and improve access to high-quality, culturally appropriate, timely end-of-life care. It also recommended that Health Canada investigate “promising therapies” like psilocybin, a hallucinogenic otherwise known as magic mushrooms, as part of palliative care.

Schouten says he lost his 18-year-old son to cancer last year, and the youth’s last days were spent in high-quality pediatric palliative care. He said his son was “not treated as somebody whose life was not worth living anymore ... the goal was to ensure he lived every day well in his dying days.”

“We’ve lost that sense of human compassion,” he says. “It doesn’t matter how it impacts society, how it impacts your family, how it impacts other people, how it impacts the health-care system, how it impacts palliative care, you get to decide that your life is going to end now, and nobody can stop you.”

‘Reckless’

The Conservative caucus released a dissenting report as an appendix to the committee’s report, which objects to many of the recommendations, including one suggesting mature minors should be eligible for physician-assisted death.

MP Michael Cooper, who presented the dissenting report, called the committee’s recommendations “reckless.” He told The Epoch Times that the committee majority, specifically all parties except the Conservatives, “turned a blind eye to [the] serious problem with the existing MAID regime,” even after hearing vulnerable people were falling through the cracks due to a lack of safeguards.

“Expanding MAID to mental illness cannot be done safely,” said the MP.

Cooper said the government is driven by ideology. “It’s not an appropriate treatment for Canadians struggling with mental illness to offer them MAID. We need to offer them help and hope.”

The government can choose to accept all, some, or none of the report’s recommendations, according to Cooper. If the recommendations are accepted, it would make Canada “the most permissive MAID regime in the world,” he said.

Inclusion Canada, an organization that advocates for the disabled, issued a Feb. 16 statement criticizing the report.

“It can’t be sugar coated—people with disabilities and their allies were ignored,” said the group. “We asked for equality-preserving changes to the law; MPs and Senators decided they knew better.”

Calling the report a “discriminatory disaster,” Inclusion Canada said people with disabilities were “disrespected” by the committee. “Their lived experience was discredited and dismissed. Many were also denied requested accommodations to deliver their testimony.”

Krista Carr, the group’s executive vice-president, alleged the committee members “made up their mind about expanding MAID before consulting with the disability community.”

She said individuals with intellectual disabilities would be placed at “even greater risk” by the suggestion that assisted suicide could be expanded to mature minors and with advance requests.

Dignity with Dying Canada, an organization in favour of MAID, did not return requests for comment. The federal ministry of justice was also unable to respond by press time.