Euthanasia has come to Canada dressed up in euphemisms and deceit.
Euthanasia has come to Canada dressed up in euphemisms and deceit.
C anada’s health-care system offers suicide to individuals who might still lead long and fulfilling lives if offered the proper care.
More than 13,000 Canadians died by euthanasia, or “provisions of MAID” (Medical Assistance in Dying) in 2022. Almost 45,000 Canadians have now been euthanized since 2015, when the supreme court of Canada legalized assisted death. Euthanasia accounts for 4.1 percent of all deaths in the country, and the rate of “provisions of MAID” is accelerating year over year. This rapid expansion is due, in part, to the passing of legislation in 2021 that expanded the eligibility for MAID to those “whose death is not reasonably foreseeable.”
This month, the Canadian government delayed the expansion of MAID for the mentally ill until 2027, citing that “the health system is not yet ready for MAID where the sole underlying condition is mental illness.” The obscure statement poses a frightening question: What does a health-care system that’s “ready” to euthanize the mentally ill look like?
The government is wrong to try to expand euthanasia to the mentally ill, and it’s dressing up its (delayed) attempts to do so in pseudo-technocratic language to hide the absurdity of the idea that killing a patient is an acceptable response to suicidality. In fact, the expansion of euthanasia in Canada has already relied entirely on ambiguous and dishonest political language.
The euthanasia regime in Canada has been criticized by a range of medical experts and even been condemned by a U.N. human-rights expert worried about the disproportionate effect of Canada’s legislation on individuals with disabilities. According to a recent study, most Canadians oppose the expansion of MAID in Canada as an alternative to adequate mental-health services.
Yet, as recently as October 18, the Liberal Party voted down a bill that could have permanently removed the eligibility of those suffering solely from “a mental disorder” from receiving MAID. In line with public opinion, the bill sought to recognize “that vulnerable Canadians should receive suicide prevention counselling rather than access medical assistance in dying.” Canadians recognize that suicide isn’t the answer — their government apparently does not.
What explains this gap between public opinion and the policy of the governing party?
George Orwell wrote, “In our time, political speech and writing are largely the defense of the indefensible. . . . Thus political language has to consist largely of euphemism, question-begging and sheer cloudy vagueness.”
The same could be said of the political speech surrounding MAID in Canada. In plain terms, the government’s MAID policies would be indefensible — few would dare to defend a policy that leads to doctors offering suicide to disabled citizens who are struggling to find housing. And yet, the government’s bespoke “political language,” euphemism, and vagueness allowed these policies to proceed with some measure of public support for years.
Medical Assistance in Dying is simply the latest in a string of contrived, oxymoronic euphemisms for the action of a doctor ending the life of a patient. Before it was called MAID, it was called Doctor Assisted Suicide; before it was called Doctor Assisted Suicide, it was called Euthanasia. But even “euthanasia” is a euphemistic term.
Probably very few Canadians know that the section of the Criminal Code on culpable homicide is one of those amended to allow for the expansion of MAID. I’m no lawyer, but an honest description of the legal shifts in Canada since 2015 might be something like “increasing exemptions from criminal liability for culpable homicide committed by a medical practitioner.” But of course, you can’t call it “doctor homicide” and still gain a political following, so “MAID” it is.
Likewise, the 2015 supreme-court decision that opened the floodgates to MAID in Canada consists of little more than word games. The court “held that the criminal laws prohibiting assistance in dying limited the rights to life, liberty and security of the person.” In a real-life instance of Orwellian doublespeak, the court found that the right to die was somehow included in the right to life and liberty.
Jean Echlin and Ian Gentles, researchers for the deVeber Institute for Bioethics and Social Research, noted that it was extremely strange that “nine judges, without a murmur of dissent, could concur with the reasoning required to find a right to state-approved self-destruction in the Charter right to life.”
Euthanasia has come to Canada on dishonest terms. Both the foundational judicial decision and the later political advocacy for the expansion of the MAID regime have profited from euphemism, vagueness, and doublespeak.
Drawing on Plato, the American conservative thinker Richard Weaver wrote, “Actually stable laws require a stable vocabulary.” By relying on inaccurate language, advocates of MAID in Canada have abandoned a fundamental principle of just lawmaking and created an increasingly unhinged system of doctor homicide.