Inside Canada’s ‘horrendous’ euthanasia system after some families say loved ones chose to die due to poor medical care
JUST eight years after euthanasia was legalised in Canada, some doctors there say the result is “horrendous” as more and more people are driven to it by a failing health-care system.
Assisted deaths have risen at an alarming rate, while the criteria to be given a lethal injection has been relaxed.
Now experts warn it would be disastrous to allow a system like Canada’s Medical Assistance In Death (MAID) in the UK, after the families of some of those who opted for it revealed they did so because they could not access medical help.
Professor Leonie Herx, a Canadian palliative medicine consultant based in Calgary, Alberta, described the outcome as “horrific from a medical perspective”.
In 2017, the first full year the legislation was in place, one per cent of deaths in Canada were from euthanasia.
By 2022, it was four per cent, as 13,241 people opted for MAID.
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Now, in the UK, a bill to legalise the early ending of life has been introduced in Parliament by Labour MP Kim Leadbeater.
A free vote is expected before Christmas — and PM Sir Keir Starmer has welcomed the debate.
‘Burden on care-givers’
Supporters insist the bill is strictly to help the terminally ill.
Ms Leadbeater said: “I believe that, with the right safeguards in place, people who are already dying and are mentally competent should be given the choice of a shorter, less painful death on their own terms and without placing family and loved ones at risk of prosecution.
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“It will not undermine calls for improvements to palliative care. Nor will it conflict with the rights of people with disabilities to be treated equally and have the respect and support they are right to campaign for in order to live fulfilling lives.”
But this is very similar to how Canada’s law was introduced — and now the rules there have softened and the numbers resorting to euthanasia have soared.
When MAID was introduced in Canada in 2016, it was limited to the terminally ill.
But following a legal challenge in 2021 it was made available to those whose death was NOT “reasonably foreseeable”.
A further change due to come into force in March 2027 will open up the service to people whose sole medical condition is mental illness.
Doctors in Canada have approved assisted dying after just Zoom calls, and some politicians want to extend the practice to old enough to make an “informed” choice.
Requests for MAID are now much more frequently approved in Canada than in 2019, when eight per cent of requests were denied.
In 2022, that figure fell to 3.5 per cent, a Health Canada report says.
I believe that, with the right safeguards in place, people who are already dying and are mentally competent should be given the choice of a shorter, less painful death on their own terms and without placing family and loved ones at risk of prosecution
Kim Leadbeater
The report adds that 17 per cent of those who applied cited “isolation or loneliness”, while nearly 36 per cent believed they were a “burden on family, friends or care-givers”.
The number of Canadians ending their lives via MAID — usually given in the form of an injection administered by a physician — has outpaced other nations with similar laws.
And its legislation has grown far looser than those of other countries offering assisted dying, such as Belgium and the Netherlands.
One expert claimed that what has happened in Canada could happen in the UK because both countries have a struggling health system and an ageing population.
Canadian-born Alexander Raikin, a researcher at the Ethics And Public Policy Centre in Washington DC, said: “Euthanasia in Canada was meant to be rare and last resort, but it isn’t. It has become routine.
“Assisted deaths have seen dramatic rates of growth in all the places that have legalised it, like the Netherlands, Switzerland and Oregon in the US, but in Canada that rate has been quite unprecedented. The similarities between Canada and the UK . . . suggest the UK is likely to follow Canada’s route.
“I don’t think it is a coincidence that this massive surge happens at the same time our health system is collapsing. It should ring alarm bells in Britain.”
In an interview with the Sun on Sunday, Canadian Alicia Duncan told, from her home in Mission, British Columbia, how her “active and happy” mother was given a fast-track death in 2021. She opted for it because she could not get the healthcare she needed.
Alicia, 41, an interior designer, now warns the UK about the perils of following Canada’s lead.
Her mum Donna, a psychiatric nurse, suffered a brain injury in a minor car crash but despite not facing immediate death, and receiving treatment for mental health symptoms, the 61-year-old’s MAID request was granted.
Despite protests by her daughter and long-serving GP, she was helped to take her own life just 48 hours later.
Alica said: “People in Britain should be very worried about this.
“It won’t stop at terminal illness alone. The UK needs to look at what happened in Canada.
“People think, ‘This will never happen to me’. I never thought my mother, who was active and happy, would have chosen to end her life because of a mental illness, and been helped to do so.
“I would say to Britain, you need to be cautious because once you decide to open this door you don’t get to choose who walks through.
“The moment you legalise euthanasia it starts as a crack then it becomes a wide-open chasm and there is nothing you can do to stop it.”
Since their mother’s death, Alicia and her sister Christie have been denied key details about the circumstances and believe safe-guards to protect vulnerable people were not followed properly.
She added: “I am so angry. People are choosing to die because they can’t access healthcare in a timely manner.
The moment you legalise euthanasia it starts as a crack then it becomes a wide-open chasm and there is nothing you can do to stop it
Alicia Duncan
“My mum was waiting to see a specialist for 18 months and her appointment was the week after she died.
“It’s easier to die in Canada than to access healthcare.”
Here in the UK, Silent Witness actress and disability campaigner Liz Carr, 52, says the new bill is a slippery slope towards offering assisted dying to those who are simply ill, old or disabled.
Ms Carr — who has rare genetic condition arthrogryposis multiplex congenita, which affects her joints and muscles, and uses a wheelchair, warned: “These laws will put lives like mine, marginalised lives, at risk and those risks will be fatal.
“All because of the dangerous assumption some of us are better off dead. Let’s be aware, maybe it’s going to be like Canada, and that is terrifying.”
This week in Canada, a 51-year old gran from Nova Scotia told how doctors offered her MAID while she was in hospital about to undergo a mastectomy for breast cancer.
These laws will put lives like mine, marginalised lives, at risk and those risks will be fatal
Liz Carr
Before she went in for what she hoped was life-saving surgery, the doctor sat her down and asked: “Did you know about Medical Assistance In Dying?”
She was then asked again before undergoing a second mastectomy nine months later, and a third time while in the recovery room after that procedure.
Around three quarters of Brits support assisted dying, a survey this year from advocacy group Dying With Dignity found, while just 14 per cent of us oppose it.
Broadcaster Esther Rantzen, 84, who joined Dignitas after being diagnosed with stage four lung cancer, this week said she hopes the bill will pass, adding: “All I’m asking is that we be given the dignity of choice.
“If I decide my own life is not worth living, please may I ask for help to die.”
But the Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, said of the bill: “This approach is both dangerous and sets us in a direction even more dangerous.
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All I’m asking is that we be given the dignity of choice. If I decide my own life is not worth living, please may I ask for help to die
Esther Rantzen
“In every place where it’s been done, it has led to a slippery slope.
“The right to end your life could too easily, all too accidentally, turn into a duty to do so.”
BRITS, BE WARNED OF PERIL
By Prof Leonie Herx, Professor of Palliative Medicine at the University of Calgary
IN Canada, a doctor-administered lethal injection has become the solution to almost any suffering, which is horrific from a medical perspective.
Any adult with a disability or chronic illness can get an “assisted death”.
There is no requirement to receive any treatment for even a reversible condition and sometimes it is the only “intervention” provided.
I have seen a person’s worst day become their last.
We are seeing people getting Maid for poverty, social isolation or deprivation.
It is routinely offered to any potentially eligible person as they access a care home, at time of surgery or during hospital admission for a health crisis.
It has altered the practice of medicine here and is leading to the premature death of many vulnerable people.
It has become something it never started as, something no Canadian could have imagined.
The UK should take warning.
Keep medicine invested in helping people restore their health and live well.