the liberals’ shambolic “medical assistance in dying” (maid) agenda blew past a potential off ramp on thursday: mps voted 167-150 against conservative mp ed fast’s private member’s bill that would have rendered people suffering solely from mental illness ineligible.
the deadline for parliament to decide on maid for the mentally ill is fast approaching — next march, a year later than originally prescribed. nothing substantive seems to have changed since the original legislation passed, or since february, when the house passed a law extending the deadline. the liberals continue to insist they want to find some kind of “consensus” on the issue, and they have reactivated parliament’s special committee on maid for that purpose.
there are those who see this as a simple matter of equal rights under the charter: in the same sense that the government can’t deny someone a passport because they’re black rather than white, the government can’t deny someone maid because they have a mental rather than physical illness. and there are those who see the notion of euthanizing the mentally ill as tantamount — or at least an invitation — to eugenics. in between there are millions of canadians who have heard the horror stories about canadians seeking and finding support for maid as a remedy for potential homelessness or lack of suitable housing, non-terminal (and/or non-existent) medical conditions, and other situations no layperson had ever contemplated. and all that took place while mental illness was excluded from the maid framework.
advertisement
in a piece for vice news this week , journalist manisha krishnan trenchantly framed the maid-for-mental-illness question in a way i hadn’t really contemplated. the memorable headline: “canada will legalize medically assisted dying for people addicted to drugs.”
that shouldn’t have come as any surprise: “substance-related and addictive disorders” are considered a mental illness among many others. but i had never considered the implications of the hopelessly divided euthanasia debate running headlong into the hopelessly divided (and considerably less polite) addictions-management debate.
krishnan introduces us to dr. david martell, an addictions specialist at nova scotia health and one of canada’s original maid providers. the interesting thing about martell is that he’s both in favour of allowing maid for mental illness and he’s a harm-reduction advocate when it comes to opioid abuse. if that seems contradictory — euthanizing addicts sure sounds like harm-maximizing to me — it’s not when you consider where he and so many others in this debate are coming from.
advertisement