From LIFE CuLTURE: Dear Anne, a 23-year-old young man from Ontario is scheduled to die by MAiD today. You read that correctly. 23-years-old.
According to a
petition by his mother to stop his death, he has Type 1 Diabetes and recently lost eyesight in his left eye and partial eyesight in his right eye. He applied and was approved for MAiD. She said, “my son is giving up on life not because of pain and suffering but because it has affected him mentally and emotionally.”
This comes on the heels of headlines a month ago, in which Veteran Affairs was exposed for offering a military veteran unsolicited MAiD resources. This story made international news sparking widespread concern within veteran and non-veteran communities regarding the complete lack of oversight concerning MAiD in Canada.
A National Post
article last week referenced a recent New York Times feature that questioned whether choosing death had become “too easy” in Canada. “Canada has the least safeguards of all countries that allow it,” University of Toronto researcher Trudo Lemmens told the publication. “It’s a state-funded, state-organized, medical system providing end of life.”
Tim Stainton, a researcher at the University of British Columbia, recently described the Canadian assisted dying regime as “probably the biggest existential threat to disabled people since the Nazis’ program in Germany in the 1930s.”
The rate of assisted suicide in Canada is surpassing that of Belgium and the Netherlands, and is drawing attention from around the world on how NOT to implement MAiD. Even the UN has criticized Canada saying, “From a disability rights perspective, there is a grave concern that, if assisted dying is made available for all persons with a health condition or impairment, regardless of whether they are close to death, a social assumption might follow … that it is better to be dead than to live with a disability,”
Yet in spite of all the concerns, opposition, and malpractice, the government is set to further reduce MAiD safeguards in March.
I encourage each one of you to take time to write your MLA, MP, The Senate, the leader of the opposition, and the PMO’s Office to denounce this blatant disregard for human life and request the government do a full review and assessment of MAiD protocols, oversight, and risk factors within all ministries and departments in Canada's government.
This issue is too important to ignore.
Sincerely,
Susan Penner