The Canadian Human Rights Commission is warning that disabled Canadians are turning to medically assisted deaths because of socio-economic hardships.
The commission “remains deeply concerned by reports that people with disabilities are choosing medical assistance in dying (MAID) because they cannot access the basic supports and services they need to live with dignity,” the commission said in a statement released Friday.
The statement calls on the government to conduct a “thorough and critical examination into these concerns.”
In March 2021, Canada changed the Criminal Code to allow MAID for people who have a “serious and incurable illness, disease or disability” but whose deaths were not “reasonably foreseeable.”
The commission’s statement comes as the government considers Bill C-62, which would delay next month’s planned expansion of MAID for mental illness until March 2027. The bill is at third reading in the Senate.
The government should “use this opportunity to conduct a thorough examination” of how Canadians with disabilities have been impacted by Canada’s laws about medically assisted dying, the human rights commission said in its statement. The government needs “a clear understanding of who is accessing MAID and why” in order to create safeguards to protect vulnerable people, the statement says.
The commission monitors Canada’s compliance with the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, an international treaty that Canada signed in 2010.
Interim Chief Commissioner Charlotte-Anne Malischewski was not available for an interview. The commission’s statement speaks for itself, the commission said in an email to Canadian Affairs.
‘Top of the list’
This is the second time the commission has raised these concerns. In May 2022, the commission released a statement expressing concerns about disabled Canadians seeking MAID because of poverty or lack of appropriate housing or supports.
National disability rights organizations met with the commission last week to discuss their concerns about Canada’s compliance with the treaty.
“The list is long. But at the very top of that list is medical assistance in dying,” Kerri Joffe, a lawyer at ARCH Disability Law Centre, an Ontario legal clinic that works with low-income people with disabilities, said at a press conference Friday morning.
At the press conference, several disability organizations, including ARCH, called on the government to not allow MAID for mental illness at all.
“We will never be ready,” said Krista Carr, executive vice president of Inclusion Canada, an organization that advocates for people with developmental disabilities.
ARCH is “deeply concerned” that expanding MAID for people whose sole condition is a mental illness “will lead to even more people contemplating, applying for and receiving MAID due to socio-economic suffering,” said Joffe.
The legal clinic knows of several people who have applied for MAID because they could not find the right housing or supports to live in the community, Joffe told the press conference.
Some people can only receive these supports in hospitals or long-term care facilities. “These are not people who are dying or want to die,” she told the press conference. “They are just disabled enough to need a level of support in the community that Ontario cannot provide for them.”
Heated debate
Bill C-62 passed second reading in the Senate Monday night after two hours of heated debate. Those who opposed the legislation said denying MAID to people whose sole underlying condition is a mental illness is discriminatory.
Some decried the Liberals for proposing to pause a decision on the subject until after the next election. “The government’s decision to delay is putting politics ahead of people,” Sen. Pamela Wallin, a consistent supporter of MAID for mental illness, told the Upper Chamber.
Sen. Yonah Martin, the Opposition Critic in the Senate, said she will “reluctantly” support the bill.
“We’ve gone too far with this expansion,” the Conservative Senator from British Columbia told the Senate. There should be an “indefinite pause” on MAID for people whose sole condition is a mental illness, she said, calling a three-year delay a “short-term solution.”
No amendments were introduced at second reading.
The Senate will sit this week before going on a break until March 18.
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