Even the UN thinks Canada's [olicies on assisted suicide make it too easy for people to kill themselves, especially the mentally disabled. Given Mr. Carney's links to the UN, Jonathon Van Maren asks why this isn't a big story during this election? Western Standard files
Opinion

VAN MAREN: UN to Canada, stop killing the mentally disabled!

'Will Mark Carney listen to his friends at the UN when they tell him there are some people who shouldn't qualify for assisted suicide?'

Western Standard Guest Columnist

Jonathon Van Maren is a communications consultant with The Acacia Group, a legal consultancy providing services to churches, charities, non-profits and religious institutions

In what should be one of the biggest Canadian election stories, on March 21 the United Nations Committee on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities published a report calling on Canada to repeal “Track 2 MAiD” and to put a halt to “advance requests” for assisted suicide, which have been permitted in Quebec since October.

Assisted suicide for terminally ill Canadians with a “reasonably foreseeable death” was legalized in 2016 via Bill C-14. In 2021, the Trudeau government legalized what is referred to as Track 2 MAiD, expanding the eligibility of assisted suicide to those with disabilities or incurable illness who are experiencing suffering, but do not have reasonably foreseeable deaths. According to government data, over 1,300 people were killed under Track 2 MAiD between 2021 and 2023.

As Meagan Gillmore reported in Canadian Affairs, a number of government representatives and civil society organizations convened in Geneva, Switzerland at the United Nations in early March “to discuss Canada’s compliance with the United Nations Conventions on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities,” which Canada has been party to since 2010, although “it has not been formally implemented into Canadian law and is incorporated inconsistently in various laws across the country.”

Several groups, including the disability rights group Inclusion Canada, had written to the committee to raise concerns that Canada’s expanding euthanasia regime is in violation of the UN convention, and that Track 2 MAiD “violates the right to life for people with disabilities.”

Canadian government representatives attempted to defend their record by highlighting Ottawa’s Disability Inclusion Action Plan to assist people with disabilities, but the committee was not convinced.

In fact, Rosemary Kayess, the vice-chair of the Committee on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, asked them how it was possible to not view Track 2 MAiD as a “step back into state-sponsored eugenics,” following that up by asking: “How is Track 2 MAiD not state-sponsored euthanasia?”

As Canadian Affairs noted, Kayess also informed them that the committee had “heard about people with disabilities applying for MAID because they struggle to meet their basic needs.”

The committee’s conclusions were a stunning and comprehensive rebuke of Canada’s assisted suicide laws.

According to Gillmore: "In its recommendations, the UN took aim at Canada’s decision to legalize Track 2 MAiD. Track 2 MAiD was legalized in 2021 after a lower Quebec court ruled that restricting MAiD to people with reasonably foreseeable deaths was unconstitutional. 

The committee “noted with concern” that the federal government never appealed that decision. The Quebec decision “fundamentally changed” MAID laws, the committee wrote. It assumes that suffering is inherent to disabilities themselves and not caused by the barriers people with disabilities face.

The committee also said the emphasis of personal choice in discussions about MAID creates a “false dichotomy.” The Canadian government will provide suffering people with disabilities access to death, without making sure they have the supports they need to live, the commission wrote.

In conclusion, the United Nations Committee on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities called on the Canadian government to halt Track 2 MAiD; to stop the scheduled 2027 expansion of assisted suicide eligibility to those whose sole condition is a mental illness, to stop proceeding forward with advance requests for assisted suicide, and to refrain from permitting assisted suicide for so-called “mature minors,” which groups such as Dying with Dignity have been pushing.

In a response to a request for comment on the UN recommendations from Canadian Affairs, Health Canada merely reiterated the current framework as well as the planned 2027 expansion. Conservative MP Ed Fast put forward a bill to ban assisted suicide for those with mental illness in 2023, but it lapsed at the end of the parliamentary session. The Trudeau government delayed MAiD for mental illness twice in response to public pressure.

“We are absolutely thrilled,” Krista Carr of Inclusion Canada told CA. “In many ways, this really vindicates the community who have been fighting this all along.” Dying with Dignity, predictably, dismissed concerns—and the lived experiences of Canadians with disabilities—by insisting in a press release that the “The effect of structural vulnerability on the lives of Canadians is a valid concern, but repealing MAID is not a solution.”

It is worth noting that they advocate for every eligibility expansion condemned by the UN.

Thus far, not a single federal party leader has addressed this stunning UN report.

Conservative Party leader Pierre Poilievre supported Ed Fast’s bill to ban assisted suicide for mental illness but has not mentioned the issue once on the campaign trail — despite the fact that euthanasia for the mentally ill poses a direct threat to nearly every Canadian family.

Prime Minister Mark Carney has said nothing, either; presumably he supports the previous Trudeau government’s policies, but if he decided to reverse course as a result of either the UN report or pressure from Poilievre, that would be an extremely welcome development.

For nearly a decade, the tragedies of Canada’s assisted suicide regime have made international news.

Now, a UN committee has not only condemned that regime, but called on the Canadian government to reverse course.

Why have federal party leaders not responded? For the Conservatives, it is an opportunity to stop further tragedy, and to campaign on their already stated position on the issue; for Carney, if he so desires, it is a chance to jump off the speeding train set into motion by his predecessors.

Jonathon Van Maren is a communications consultant with The Acacia Group, a legal consultancy providing services to churches, charities, non-profits and religious institutions.