MAiD
Canadian psychiatrist sounds alarm over Trudeau gov’t plan to expand euthanasia to the mentally ill
From LifeSiteNews
” someone not dying because of their condition, such as a mental disorder alone, seeking death is, by definition, suicidal. “
Dr. Harvey Chochinov, the well known professor of psychiatrisy from the University of Manitoba and the developer of dignity therapy, wrote an article that was published in the National Post on December 30, 2023 titled: Intensive compassionate caring — not MAiD — is the most effective way to address mental illness.
Chochinov writes:
It’s time to put the brakes on Medical Assistance in Dying (MAID) in Canada for those whose sole underlying medical condition is mental illness.
The federal government has tasked the Special Joint Committee on Medical Assistance in Dying to determine if Canada is ready to extend MAID eligibility, starting in March 2024, to patients with mental illness alone. Despite those convinced it is time, and safe, to launch what amounts to ‘psychiatric euthanasia,’ the special committee must pay attention to a murmur of protest that has grown to a roar: Ottawa, we’ve got a problem.
Current MAID eligibility requires a person have a grievous and irremediable medical condition. Unlike some cancers, and many neurodegenerative disorders, no mental disorder can be described as irremediable. To be sure, there are individuals whose mental affliction won’t improve, despite myriad treatments or psychosocial interventions. But there is currently no way to predict which patients won’t get better.
Studies of prognostic accuracy show psychiatrists are wrong half the time. I have cared for patients struggling with chronic suicidality; patients I worried might one day take their lives. I recall a woman with mind-numbing depression, who teetered precariously between life and death. One day, after years of countless drug trials, hospitalizations, electroconvulsive therapy, and various psychosocial interventions, she arrived for her appointment — three weeks into starting a new antidepressant — with a grin on her face.
‘The door is purple,’ she declared. I told her the door had always been purple, to which she replied, ‘I know, but now I care.’
Before that moment, no one — not me, not her friends or family and not anyone on The Special Joint Committee on Medical Assistance in Dying, nor any MAID assessor — could have predicted her recovery.
Chochinov then states that intensive, unwavering, compassionate care and caring — not MAID — offers the most effective way to address this kind of suffering.
The other reason not to launch psychiatric euthanasia is our inability to determine suicidality from those requesting MAID whose sole underlying medical condition is mental illness. According to the Canadian Association for Suicide Prevention, someone not dying because of their condition, such as a mental disorder alone, seeking death is, by definition, suicidal.
Similarly, the first item listed by the American Association of Suicidology differentiating physician hastened death and suicide is the patient must be dying. That certainly does not characterize patients who are mentally ill.
The euthanasia expansionists told the Special Joint Committee on Medical Assistance in Dying that “suicidality and having a reason to want to die are not at all the same.” Chochinov responds by stating:
We can say ‘six’ and ‘half-dozen’ are not the same as many times as we like. If we repeat it frequently, consistently and without equivocation, it might even sound convincing, but that doesn’t make it true.
Patients struggling with suicidality often have a reason to want to die, based on, for example, self-loathing, feeling like a burden or becoming worn down pursuing care and support that could sustain them. In those instances, the line between MAID and suicide simply vanishes.
Avoiding discrimination does not mean everyone is treated the same, but rather, that everyone gets equal access to what they need to thrive.
Time and again, committee members have asked witnesses when Canada’s psychiatric euthanasia program can be launched. I would suggest they behave like NASA. When a potentially catastrophic problem is identified before blast-off, space engineers don’t set an arbitrary new launch date, no more so than Health Canada announces a random release date of a new drug discovered to have unacceptable side-effects.
Ottawa, we have a problem.
The federal government would be well advised to scrap this mission. But if it insists on moving forward, launch should proceed only when the problems are solved, and not a moment sooner.
Reprinted with permission from Euthanasia Prevention Coalition.
From LifeSiteNews
Carney also said last week that he is willing to use all government powers, including “emergency powers,” to enforce his energy plan if elected prime minister.
World Economic Forum-linked Liberal Party leadership frontrunner Mark Carney has a history of supporting central bank digital currencies, and in 2022 supported “choking off the money” donated to the Freedom Convoy.
In his 2021 book Value(s), Carney said that the “future of money” is a “central bank stablecoin, known as a central bank digital currency or CBDC.”
He noted in his book that such a currency would be similar to current cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin, but without the private nature afforded to it by its decentralization.
“It is simply untenable in democracies that the core of the monetary system could be based on forms of electronic private money whose creators control large blocks of the currency, like Bitcoin,” he wrote. “Cryptocurrencies are not the future of money.”
Carney noted that a CBDC, if “properly designed,” could serve “all the functions to which private cryptocurrencies and stablecoins aspire while addressing the fundamental legal and governance issues that will, in time, undermine those alternatives.”
Expanding on his worldview in relation to CBDCs, Carney suggested that “fear” can be taken advantage of to shape the future of money.
“With fear on the march, people were willing to surrender to Hobbes’ ‘Leviathan’ such basic rights as the freedom to leave their homes,” he wrote. “And so it is with money. People will support the delegation to independent central banks of the tough decisions that are necessary to maintain the value of money provided the authorities deliver monetary and financial stability.”
Some Canadians are alarmed by the prospect of CBDCs, a fear that only worsened after the Liberals under Prime Minister Justin Trudeau froze hundreds of bank accounts it deemed were importantly linked to the 2022 Freedom Convoy.
During the Freedom Convoy, Carney wrote in an op-ed for the Globe and Mail, “Those who are still helping to extend this occupation must be identified and punished to the full force of the law,” adding that “Drawing the line means choking off the money that financed this occupation.”
Carney is a former head of the Bank of Canada and Bank of England. His ties to globalist groups have led to Conservative Party leader Pierre Poilievre calling him the World Economic Forum’s “golden boy.”
In addition to his comments on CBDCs, Carney has a history of promoting anti-life and anti-family agendas, including abortion and LGBT-related efforts. He has also previously endorsed the carbon tax and even criticized Trudeau when the tax was exempted from home heating oil to reduce costs for some Canadians.
Carney also said last week that he is willing to use all government powers, including “emergency powers,” to enforce his energy plan if elected prime minister.
The Liberal Party of Canada will choose its next leader, who will automatically become prime minister, on March 9, after Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced that he plans to step down as Liberal Party leader once a new leader has been chosen.
In contrast to Carney, Poilievre has promised that if he is elected prime minister, he would stop any implementation of a “digital currency” or a compulsory “digital ID” system.
When it comes to a digital Canadian dollar, the Bank of Canada found that Canadians are very wary of a government-backed digital currency, concluding that a “significant number” of citizens would resist the implementation of such a system.
From LifeSiteNews
Of the 662 people who were not in danger of death but succumbed to medical assistance in dying last year, 47.1 percent cited as reasons for wanting to die ‘isolation or loneliness.’
Official government data shows that about half of Canadians who are not terminally ill yet wanted to end their lives via state-sanctioned assisted suicide did so last year because they said they were lonely.
According to data published by Health Canada on December 11 in its fifth annual report on medical assistance in dying (MAID), 15,342 people were approved for and died by euthanasia in 2023.
A total of 14,721 of these deaths were in cases where illness or disability were likely down the road or considered “reasonably foreseeable.” These are called Track 1 MAiD deaths.
However, 662 deaths were people who were not dying. Of these Track 2 deaths, 47.1 percent cited as reasons for wanting to die “isolation or loneliness.” By comparison, about 21.1 percent of Track 1 deaths reported the same feelings for wanting to die by doctor-led suicide.
The report stated that “social isolation and loneliness are shown to have a serious impact on physical and mental health, quality of life, and longevity.”
Of the Track 2 deaths, 35.7 percent lived alone, compared with 30.2 percent of Track 1 deaths. Of Track 1 deaths, the average age was 77.7 years. The average age of Track 2 deaths was 75.
Of note is that this year’s Health Canada report on MAiD is the first to include so-called “verbal” requests from individuals as official. Previously, those who wanted to die via assisted suicide had to submit a form to Health Canada in order to be officially recorded as a request to die by suicide.
Under Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, whose Liberal government legalized MAiD in 2016, the deadly program has continued to relax its rules on who is eligible for death.
As reported by LifeSiteNews, 1 in 20 Canadian deaths in 2023 came from assisted suicide.
Instances of people being offered MAiD as a solution to their health issues have become commonplace in Canada, as reported by LifeSiteNews.
Last week, LifeSiteNews reported how a senior Canadian couple said that a hospice care center presented euthanasia to one of them as an option because they could not afford increased care costs on their fixed income.
Canadian pro-life leaders have criticized the Trudeau government’s continued push for expanding MAiD.
Indeed, most Canadians fear the nation’s euthanasia regime unfairly targets those who are financially and socially vulnerable while still supporting the immoral practice in general.
In 2021, the program expanded from killing only terminally ill patients to allowing the chronically ill to qualify. Since then, the government has sought to include those suffering solely from mental illness.
The number of Canadians killed by lethal injection under the nation’s MAiD program since 2016 stands at close to 65,000, with an estimated 16,000 deaths in 2023 alone. Many fear that because the official statistics are manipulated the number may be even higher.
Canada had approximately 15,280 euthanasia deaths in 2023.
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