Krista Carr is the Executive Vice President and CEO of Inclusion Canada. Inclusion Canada is a national federation of 300 local and 13 Provincial/Territorial Associations working on behalf of approximately 1 million Canadians with a developmental disability and their families. Ms. Carr recently appeared before a parliamentary committee on The Status of Persons with Disabilities. Committee member and MP Garnett Genuis asked Ms. Carr about disabled Canadians’ fear of seeking ordinary medical treatment. Canada assisted suicide law (euphemistically referred to as Medical Assistance in Dying MAiD). Carr informed the committee of health care providers suggesting MAiD, under track 2 of the legislation.[1] Genuis asked how often she encounters this? She said “weekly.”
More than 90,000 people have been killed under MAiD. It now accounts for 1 in 20 deaths in Canada.
This is just the natural of post-Hippocratic medicine. The ancient Oath (dating back to the fifth Century BC) forbade assisted suicide (and abortion). It said:
“I will do no harm or injustice to them [patients]. Neither will I administer a poison to anybody when asked to do so, nor will I suggest such a course. Similarly I will not give to a woman a pessary to cause abortion.”
Awkward …! Modern medicine does both. The new revised Hippocratic Oath was removed any reference to helping people killing themselves or a abortion. An apt name for the new is Hypocritical Oath.
I witnessed this anti-disability bigotry amongst Canadian medical professionals more than 30 years ago when I was a member of the ethics committee for the University of Alberta Hospital. When I joined the committee in 1992, as their community/disability representative, I was in an electric wheelchair (multiple sclerosis). My chair stuck out like a sore thumb for other members of the ethics committee. I used my wheelchair as a credential. In the early years, medical professionals sitting around the table were very good at treating patients with disabilities with the same treatments and protocols that everyone else received. In 1995, a case came before the committee about a young man named with Down Syndrome named Terry Urquhart. He had been denied admission on to the lung transplant list because of a hospital policy the hospital had that only persons of “reasonable intelligence” could be considered for transplantation. transplant list.
His tenacious parents would not accept that answer, but the hospital was firm. They did exactly what any good parent would do: They took the story to the media. They got friends to protest outside the hospital. Disability organizations lobbied on Terry’s behalf. The Chair on the ethics committee was visibly agitated. Reporters wanted to talk to him. I asked if the hospital really had a policy excluding people with Down Syndrome from receiving organ transplantation. They admitted it. My response was blunt: “Then we deserve every lump of bad publicity and public scorn we get.” Eventually the hospital caved to the embarrassment of such a discriminatory policy and public pressure that Terry got his lung transplant.[2]
I was happy that Terry got his much needed lung transplant, I was shocked at how many Albertans felt that the
A number of Albertans felt that Terry’s transplant was a “waste” and organs should g to more “productive” members of society. Some radio phone-in callers said they were considering tearing up their organ donor cards because of the hospital’s decision. It was yet another indication how low people with disabilities are held in certain quarters.
During my tenure on the university hospital ethics committee, I noticed a hardening of medical professionals on the committee toward care of severely disabled patients. Things that previous went unspoken or whispered just out of my earshot were openly said to my face. Hostility toward the disabled was overtly expressed. Parents of a little boy born with a severe disability who required a major procedure (I can’t remember the details). The background information about the case indicated the child was happy and came from a supportive and loving family. A senior doctor on the committee objected to this assertion and said the parents were actually abusive! I asked her where she got such an idea. She glared at me and said, “Because they are abusive because they agreed to treatment when he was born.” Despite the report stating the child was happy and had a good family, the doctor rejected the report because of her own anti-disability bias.
Fast forward to 2025. Euthanasia/assisted suicide has been legal in Canada since 2016. What was sold as an option for dying people whose deaths were “reasonably foreseeable” was just the beginning—the thin edge of a deadly wedge. In 2021, a second phase began that removed the criteria of death being “reasonably foreseeable.” The cross-hairs shifted to Canada’s disabled in what is known as track 2 of MAiD. We are waiting for the jaws of MAiD to widen widely to include people whose sole condition is mentally ill and suicidal. Barbarism!
[1] Track 2 of MAiD is specifically targeted at people with disabilities that are not terminal. This is the distinguishing factor between track 1 and track 2. Track 1 requires a person’s illness or disability to have a death in the foreseeable future. Track 2 is for non-terminable people with disabilities. An AI search of track 2 MAiD states that individual eligibility criteria is for:
“… [I]ndividuals whose natural death is not reasonably foreseeable: They must be at least 18, eligible for Canadian public healthcare, and have a grievous and irremediable medical condition. This includes having a serious and incurable illness, disease, or disability that is in an advanced state of irreversible decline and causes unbearable suffering. A voluntary, informed request is required, and two independent practitioners must perform the assessments, which includes consultation with a specialist if needed. While the eligibility assessment period is typically at least 90 days, it can be shortened if the person's capacity is at risk of being lost.”
In 2027, MAiD will be offered to mentally ill Canadians who are suicidal. That’s how stone-hearted Canada’s governing Liberal Party has become.
[2] “Disabled boy gets transplant, The Interim magazine, 29 April 1995.
