A man from Canada who struggled to access surgery for an injury sustained at work was offered assisted dying, raising concerns that similar situations could arise in England and Wales if Kim Leadbeater’s assisted suicide Bill becomes law.
According to reports, the Canadian man was “injured in a workplace accident, was denied the surgery he needs and instead he was offered assisted dying (MAiD) by a healthcare practitioner and the system”.
The man in question was interviewed about the issue, telling Alex Schadenberg, Executive Director of the Euthanasia Prevention Coalition in Canada, “She (the doctor) didn’t push suicide on me. To clarify, I’ve been begging for surgery and they have denied me. If I ask for assisted suicide they have everything ready to go. That’s the point I’m trying to get across. I asked for these forms out of anger and got them immediately”.
Regular offers of euthanasia or assisted suicide
Situations in which people who are in need of treatment are offered assistance in suicide have occurred on other occasions in Canada. Since the original legislation allowing euthanasia and assisted suicide was passed in 2016, reports have emerged of Canadians who have struggled to access healthcare but have been offered euthanasia or assisted suicide.
Retired corporal, Christine Gauthier, who competed in the 2016 Rio de Janeiro Paralympics, testified before a Canadian House of Commons Veterans Affairs Committee at the beginning of December 2022 that an unnamed veterans affairs case worker had said, in writing, that Ms Gauthier could be provided with a euthanasia device when all she had wanted was a stairlift to be installed in her home.
Ms Gauthier, 52, said “I have a letter saying that if you’re so desperate, madam, we can offer you MAID, medical assistance in dying”.
Canadian veteran Kelsi Sheren said that she knows almost a dozen former military servicemen who have been offered medical assistance in dying by Canadian authorities, calling this “disgusting” and “unacceptable”.
“When you take people who were willing to put their lives on the line for you, for your safety, then you have the audacity to tell them [it’s] better if you just die… it is one of the most disgusting things”.
“It’s unacceptable, and it is one of the most infuriating things to come down from the Canadian administration in the last decade”, she added.
“I’ve been pressured to do an assisted suicide”
At the end of 2022, it was found that as many as five Canadian veterans had been offered assisted suicide or euthanasia instead of the care they actually wanted and needed.
In January 2023, The Telegraph published a ‘Letter to the Editor’ in which a reader from Canada outlined that a family member had to wait a year for a psychiatric appointment but that it was possible to make an appointment for euthanasia in two weeks.
In 2018, Roger Foley, a Canadian man with a chronic neurological disease, recorded hospital staff offering him an assisted suicide despite him being clear that he wanted assistance to live at home and not to end his life. After telling a member of staff that he would be fine if he just had funding, the staff member said “But if you weren’t, you, just, you can just apply to get an assisted, if you want to end your life, like you know what I mean. You don’t have to do it in some dramatic manner, you can apply for assisted, you know…”.
Mr Foley has been clear that he does not want to die. He told the New York Post “I’ve been pressured to do an assisted suicide”.
Concerns of assisted suicide being seen as cheaper option
These experiences of Canadians being offered assisted dying since 2016 will raise concerns that something similar could happen in the UK under Kim Leadbeater’s assisted suicide Bill.
Prior to the vote in November 2024, Palliative care doctors warned that assisted suicide will be seen as “cheaper” than caring for people who are terminally ill and called for greater investment in palliative care, rather than introducing assisted suicide.
In a letter to Labour MP Kim Leadbeater expressing that they “strongly oppose” her Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill, a group of 24 palliative care doctors wrote, “It hasn’t gone unnoticed that assisted dying is financially a cheaper solution than providing holistic care to those who are dying”.
Dr Rachel Clarke, a specialist in hospital palliative care, said “My concern is that if we change the law without adequate resourcing of palliative care, then there will be people who choose to end their lives because they weren’t being provided with the care they needed”.
During Committee Stage, Kim Leadbeater refused to introduce safeguards to prevent doctors from bringing up assisted suicide with their patients unprompted, despite concerns raised by witnesses that such an action could itself be a form of coercion.
An amendment to guarantee a specialist palliative care consultation for anyone considering assisted suicide was rejected. Under the Bill in its current form, a doctor is permitted to use their “professional judgement” to raise the topic of assisted suicide with a patient proactively. This would permit a doctor to initiate a conversation about assisted suicide with a vulnerable person who has not given any indication that they are interested in the idea, leading to the possibility that cases similar to Roger Foley’s in Canada could arise in England and Wales if the Leadbeater Bill becomes law.
Spokesperson for Right To Life UK, Catherine Robinson, said “The latest horror story from Canada’s disastrous euthanasia and assisted suicide programme should serve as a stark warning for MPs preparing to vote at Third Reading”.
“Under Kim Leadbeater’s dangerous assisted suicide Bill, a nightmare scenario could develop whereby a doctor could raise the topic of assisted suicide with a vulnerable person who had not previously spoken about it. This is completely unacceptable, and is a further illustration why this fundamentally flawed Bill is completely unfit for purpose”.
