How MAiD Went From Merciful End To Bureaucratic Nightmare.

Bulletin: “MAiD now accounts for 5.1 percent of all deaths in Canada – one in every 20 deaths was due to MAiD in 2024— with a total of 76,475 MAiD deaths reported by Health Canada since 2016.”

When Elbows Up Canadians brag about their moral superiority over Americans the introduction of Medical Assistance in Dying ranks with single-payer health care and one-dollar coins on the list of bragging points. Launched with his usual hubris by PM Justin Trudeau in June of 2016, the MAiD procedure is now considered a staple of Canadian life— and death.

By contrast, when told about MAiD’s availability Americans, who remain more religious than Canadians, are shocked that the state would assist people in ending their lives. But for secular Canadians the voluntary curtailing  of life is now seen as a blessing. Religious constraints are secondary to the legal ending of pain and distress. As the numbers demonstrate, there has been a surge in its use as Boomers enter their end years.

However as the rollout continues, people with loved ones are discovering the law of unintended consequences. New side effects have arisen. Namely, if you seek the service you’d better be ready to take it before you might prefer. Under MAiD, persons must be of sound enough mind to consent to the process. This is to protect the old, ill and enfeebled from being eliminated by heirs who want their inheritance or their freedom sooner. That’s beneficial.

But the side effects are not. In several instances we’ve seen, the person asking for MAiD has slipped into dementia or a similar condition before taking the service. Once this happens, pre-written Living Wills or care instructions are moot. The patient is kept alive to await a natural death. Often this can extend for a lengthy period, stressing the patient and the family even more.

But an earlier-than-desired death is also stressful for the patient and the family. Families and friends of a person still alert and aware witness a premature death for persons with some positive life left— a regrettable and stressful result. 

In the early days of MAiD the approved conditions were limited to physical diagnoses. There were numerous stories of families fighting with loved ones who had received a terminal diagnosis and wished to “end it all” quickly. But the conditions were physical. 

Then came legal MAiD approval for people suffering psychological distress. Warned of this possibility by ethicists in the early days of the legislation, this expansion of conditions has completely re-arranged the landscape. People simply depressed are asking for MAiD. Or healthcare organizations rationing their dollars might be talking a marginally stricken candidate into the process.

Here a lawyer says MAiD for mental problems is the only antidote to suicide.

We are now seeing reports of a liberal, even cavalier use of MAiD by healthcare professionals. A recent panel urged Parliament to lower the MAiD age to “at least 12,” claiming children should be able to make decisions about their own deaths.

There have also been prominent stories of aging victims arriving at the hospital for health issues being offered MAiD upon admittance. This 84-year-old woman had back pain but the attending doctor offered her MAiD as she arrived at hospital.

Famously, Canadian paralympian Christine Gauthier claimed she was recommended for MAiD when she was unable to obtain a wheelchair ramp for her home.

There are also concerns with how badly MAiD is being applied in Canada. Up to two hours to die.  No training— just a "fee code." Not using anesthesiologists. Only 25 percent are getting the proper shot. Not quick, not dignified, and not necessarily painless— leaving many doctors wanting “nothing to do with the process.”

The increased enthusiasm for pushing MAiD is not surprising in cash-strapped facilities. According Dr. Ian Dowbiggin in “A Merciful End”, there is a relationship between the birth control, abortion rights, eugenics, and euthanasia movements which facilitates acceptance of MAiD by the public. While all are concerned with “the responsible care of human life,” from the beginning to the end, Dowbiggin asks “Where does the freedom to die end and the duty to die begin?” 

While Americans with their widespread religious beliefs largely reject MAiD, secular Canadians— especially in Quebec— have no such constraints. Since Quebec abandoned the Catholic Church in favour of the church of government, any suggestion of organized religion has been verboten in the chattering classes in Ottawa. For instance, Liberal and NDP MPs were horrified that Conservative members carried bibles with them into the Commons.

Immediately they denounced the imposition of American-style Christianity. Liberal rent-a-fool Marc Miller, a Montreal MP, said that some passages in the Bible were “hateful” for what they said about homosexuality and that those who recited them should be jailed. “There are clearly instances in these texts where these statements are hateful,” Miller said. “They should not be used as an invocation or defense,”

What Miller and the secularists cannot recognize is that they impose their own worship of worldly idols of the religious. They flaunt their own beliefs ad nauseum. Voters are expected to dutifully worship the scientific Covid dogma and trans psycho therapy obsessions which are thrown in Canadians’ faces every day.

When it comes to Canada’s progressive Woke army, introspection is only for those they oppose. And as long as Quebec wants something the federal government will be only too happy to oblige in a now-majority Parliament.

Bruce Dowbiggin @dowbboy is the editor of Not The Public Broadcaster  A two-time winner of the Gemini Award as Canada's top television sports broadcaster, his 2023 book Inexact Science: The Six Most Compelling Draft Years In NHL History, was voted a Top 20 greatest professional hockey books of all time by bookauthority.org . https://www.amazon.ca/dp/1770415300?linkCode=gs2&tag=uuid0a1-20 His previous book with his son Evan, Deal With It: The Trades That Stunned The NHL And Changed Hockey is now available on Amazon. His new poetry collection In Other Words is available via brucedowbigginbooks.ca and on Kindle books at https://www.amazon.ca/dp/1069802700