Assisted dying has been rapidly expanded in Canada. Photo / 123RF
Assisted dying has been rapidly expanded in Canada. Photo / 123RF
Assisted dying is being abused in Canada with doctors coercing patients into ending their lives, members of the group who helped to legalise it have admitted.
Assisted dying has since been rapidly expanded, with disabled people given access in 2021 and those with mental health conditions set to join them by 2027.
The Telegraph can now reveal that members of the British Columbia Civil liberties Association (BCCLA), the group that spearheaded efforts to legalise assisted dying, have privately raised fears that the practice is being “abused”.
Staff members also fear disabled people in Canada are being coerced by doctors into choosing to end their lives.
It comes as data revealed by the Telegraph last week showed those on lower incomes who were offered the scheme were more likely to opt for it.
In leaked footage from a video call last year between the association’s staff and a Canadian disabled patients’ group seen by the Telegraph, an employee at the campaigning group admitted “we are seeing [assisted dying] being abused”.
In one instance, they spoke of a patient who had been approved for assisted dying on the grounds of suffering from hearing loss.
On the same call, it was claimed some medical colleges in Canada had been advising against referring to assisted dying on patients’ long-form death certificates, in a move which could distort the true numbers of people using it.
‘Very uncomfortable’
One staff member admitted feeling “very uncomfortable” about the group’s previous campaigning on assisted suicide.
Speaking on the call, one of the two current association employees said: “It is the social and material aspect of [patients] disability and how that isn’t supported and how that’s treated in the community that’s creating intolerable conditions”.
“In my view, that’s not proper,” they said, adding that healthcare providers should not raise the subject of assisted dying with patients as “it’s far too easy for that to become coercive”.
In a separate voicemail message shared with the Telegraph, another alleged employee voiced regret about the campaigning group’s past agenda and spoke of trying to formulate a new policy that “distances the [association] from its past work”.
It comes as a bill has been introduced in the United Kingdom which would allow those who have six months to live to be assisted to end their life, subject to safeguards.
Medical Assistance in Dying was introduced in Canada in 2016. Photo / 123RF
Kim Leadbeater, the British Labour MP who last week introduced her private member’s bill to legalise the practice for terminally ill patients in Britain, has insisted that her plans “contains robust protections”.
But Canadian medical and legal experts have warned that opening the door to assisted dying could lead to the limitations on who is eligible being stripped away.
“One of the most worrying aspects of the Canadian experiment is it shows that once you start legalising, there is a risk that a significant number of physicians normalise this practice,” said Trudo Lemmens, a professor of law at the university of Toronto who has testified before Canadian parliamentary committees on the introduction of assisted dying.
“It’s like putting fuel on the fire. I’m not sure it can be easily contained,” he continued.
“Once it’s implemented, there will be advocacy groups pushing for further expansion, and I see that already in the English debate.”
In a poignant example of how the vulnerable are being targeted, the Telegraph earlier this month revealed how a grandmother suffering with breast cancer was offered assisted dying by the very doctors who were about to give her a life-saving mastectomy.
The 51-year-old, from Nova Scotia, said she was made to feel as though she would be better off dead.
The Telegraph also spoke to another patient, Roger Foley, 49, who lodged a legal complaint after being offered assisted suicide four times.
The Ontario man, who struggles with lifelong disabilities owing to a disease called cerebellar ataxia, leaving him bed-ridden, said: “To hear litigation and policy members of this group all of a sudden admit they were wrong and flawed in their approach, I just think of all the victims and casualties and wrongful deaths that have happened that they caused”.
“Are they going to have the same passion to support vulnerable people to live as they had in the past to let them die?”
Canada’s experiment began in 2016, after the country’s Supreme Court ruled in the case of Carter vs Canada that “laws prohibiting physician-assisted dying interfere with the liberty and security” of people with “grievous and irremediable” medical conditions.
The case was brought by Gloria Taylor, Lee Carter, Hollis Johnson, and Elayne Shapray, who shared their experiences of medical conditions and advocated for assisted dying.
Risk was judged to be negligible
At the time, Carter’s lawyer Joseph Arvay of the association argued that the risk of people unnecessarily ending their lives through an assisted dying scheme was negligible.
Yet fast-forward eight years, and the first official report into assisted dying deaths in Ontario, revealed last week by the Telegraph, found vulnerable people faced “potential coercion” and “undue influence” to seek out the practice.
According to the data, disproportionate numbers of people who ended their lives through assisted dying when they were not terminally ill – 29% – came from Ontario’s poorest areas.
That compares with 20% of the province’s general population living in the most deprived communities.
Rebecca Vachon, the programme director for Health at Cardus, a Canadian Christian think-tank, said: “Had proponents of legal euthanasia listened to the concerns of disability groups initially, we might not be in this situation”.
“Still, if anyone who pushed for euthanasia now recognises the problems it has caused for so many people, then I welcome any efforts to limit and lessen that harm.”
Liza Hughes, executive director of the association, said assisted dying “is a complex, sensitive, and nuanced conversation”.
“There are differing views, including within disability communities. BCCLA stands by our work to make the right to choose MAiD a reality in Canada, and the immense, unnecessary suffering that has been prevented as a result.
“Nobody should be coerced into choosing MAiD. Governments must put in place and enforce appropriate safeguards to ensure that people are making this decision freely and provide adequate social supports so that people are able to lead dignified lives.
“The comments quoted from this meeting with community last year are not representative of the BCCLA position. Our work on MAiD continues to evolve with a focus on a shared goal of reducing intolerable suffering.”
