Canada Is Still Confusing Assisted Suicide with Health Care

Proponents of assisted suicide have spent years arguing that this practice is a humane way to alleviate the suffering of terminally ill patients. But the case study of Canada shows just how flawed this argument is.

Many have warned that legalizing assisted suicide was a slippery slope that could lead to people seeking death for reasons other than terminal illness—and Canada is proving them right.

The country had planned to expand its assisted suicide program by offering it to people suffering from mental illness beginning in March 2024. And while officials have temporarily postponed these plans, they are still failing to understand assisted suicide’s dangerous and dehumanizing implications.

‘Medical assistance in dying’

Canada legalized both assisted suicide and direct euthanasia in June 2016, referring to them collectively as “medical assistance in dying” or “MAID”—euphemisms that distract from the dark reality of these practices. Originally, to be eligible for MAID, an applicant had to satisfy certain criteria. His or her death had to be “reasonably foreseeable,” among other requirements.

Even under that criterion, assisted suicide is morally indefensible. But the requirement at least showed that Canadian lawmakers understood the need for some regulations on the practice.

Still, it took less than five years for Canada to eliminate that guardrail. In March 2021, the country’s parliament passed a new law that said citizens could be eligible for assisted suicide even if their death was “not considered reasonably foreseeable”; rather, they had to be suffering from “a grievous irremediable medical condition” and “be in an advanced state of decline that cannot be reversed.” These new guidelines allow people who are permanently disabled or have chronic pain to be eligible. To see the effects of this alarming change, one must look no further than Amir Farsoud of Ontario.

Seeking death over homelessness

Farsoud is a middle-aged man who suffered a debilitating back injury years ago, and he now receives around $1,200 a month from the Ontario Disability Support Program. In October 2022, he told CityNews that his rent and bills left him with only about $7 per day for food. When the house he was living in was put up for sale, he began to ponder the unthinkable: choosing assisted suicide to avoid poverty.

Farsoud said he wouldn’t be contemplating suicide were it not for his housing situation. But because of fears that he would not be able to find anywhere else affordable to live, he applied for assisted suicide and received a signature from a doctor confirming he met the criteria.

Thankfully, Canada requires a minimum of 90 days to assess eligibility for MAID for someone who is not terminally ill, and also requires the approval of two doctors. During the 90-day timeframe, Farsoud’s story was widely shared on social media. A stranger started a GoFundMe for him that ended up raising $60,000, and Farsoud told CityNews in November 2022 that he is no longer considering suicide.

“I’m a different person,” Farsoud told the outlet. “The first time we spoke, I had nothing but darkness, misery, stress, and hopelessness. Now I have all the opposite of those things.”

While Farsoud chose life, many others have not. In the first six years of Canada’s MAID program, over 31,000 people died by assisted suicide or euthanasia.

Canada removes even more safeguards

As part of its March 2021 changes, Canada removed the waiting period requirement for those who are terminally ill and seeking assisted suicide or euthanasia. While people like Farsoud who are not terminally ill will still have a chance to rethink their decisions during the 90-day waiting period, terminally ill patients can be pushed into assisted suicide without time to think through their decision.

Instead of providing the most vulnerable in society with the quality care and support they need, the Canadian government has decided it would simply be easier to give them lethal drugs upon request.

In addition, Canada planned to expand MAID by offering it to people suffering from mental illnesses. Officials postponed the plan in January 2024, but Health Minister Mark Holland said that Canada still plans to implement the expansion in the future.

“The system needs to be ready, and we need to get it right,” Holland said. “It’s clear from the conversations we’ve had that the system is not ready, and we need more time.”

Canadian officials said they need more doctors who can “assess patients with mental illnesses who want to end their lives and to help them do so,” as The New York Times put it. But what Canada really needs is a health-care system that focuses on helping people who are struggling rather than pressuring them to end their lives.

While Canada’s government has failed to protect life, Canadian life advocate Amanda Achtman is providing hope amid the darkness of state-sponsored death through her project Dying to Meet You. Aiming to “humanize our conversation on suffering, death, meaning, and hope,” Achtman facilitates conversations about euthanasia and assisted suicide.

Dying to Meet You provides a platform for voices that often go unheard in the debate about assisted suicide and euthanasia. Achtman conducts interviews, appears on podcasts, and organizes events to discuss the beauty of life and the importance of valuing it from beginning to end.

While advocates like Achtman are doing important work to change hearts and minds, we know at Alliance Defending Freedom that changing unjust laws is another worthy goal.

Standing up to a culture of death

Unfortunately, some states in the U.S. have followed Canada’s lead by decreasing the crucial waiting period during which people like Farsoud might find hope. In California, for example, Gov. Gavin Newsom signed a law in October 2021 that reduced the waiting period for assisted suicide from 15 days to just 48 hours.

The state’s law also required health-care professionals to assist patients’ access, upon their request, to assisted suicide. Thus, doctors who hold to basic medical-ethics principles (e.g., “do no harm”) faced a terrible choice: either participate in the assisted suicide process or potentially lose their practice and face civil or criminal penalties.

ADF attorneys filed a lawsuit against California challenging this law, representing the Christian Medical & Dental Associations. Thankfully, after a federal court issued a ruling protecting doctors’ First Amendment rights, California officials agreed to a favorable settlement. The officials agreed to no longer force doctors to participate in assisted suicide against their beliefs and paid $300,000 toward attorneys’ fees for the physicians who brought the lawsuit.

There is nothing compassionate or dignified about assisted suicide. Once you say it is better to die than to live with a disease, it’s no surprise that society begins viewing death as an alternative to other types of suffering like poverty or loneliness.

Whether in Canada, the U.S., or any other country, people deserve to receive the help they truly need. ADF will continue to defend everyone’s right to life, from conception to natural death.