LABOUR’s legalised euthanasia Bill is proving deeply unpopular. MPs describe it as ‘rushed’, ‘fundamentally flawed’ and ‘chaotic’. If passed, the country’s collective mindset will change for ever, introducing the concept that in ill health, physical or mental, we can become a burden to ourselves, our families and the State, and it might be better to be put out of our misery like a sick pet.
In 2012, father of two Tony Nicklinson, 58, lost a High Court bid to allow doctors to end his life. After a stroke, Tony developed locked-in syndrome, which is total body paralysis without affecting lucidity. He described it as a ‘living nightmare’, unable to do anything for himself. If he had a simple itch, someone had to scratch it for him. It was hell.
I went to see him two months before he died and we communicated through his wife, Jane, a nurse, and an alphabet board. I also met his grown-up daughters Lauren and Beth. They clearly loved their dad but suffered with him. It was a highly emotional experience.
I understood and sympathised with Tony’s desire to end his life. Paralysis meant he physically could not kill himself, but if a family member provided lethal assistance, police could arrest them for murder. Clearly no one wanted that. In the end, Tony contracted pneumonia and went downhill rapidly, refusing food.
It seemed obvious he should have had a choice, but . . . legalised euthanasia is open to abuse not only from relatives, but from governments too. We see that clearly in Canada which for nine years, has offered state-sponsored suicide. Critics say it has gone from a compassionate option for the terminally ill to a predatory system, and now organisations are pushing for children to access Medical Assistance in Dying (MAiD). Activity books in schools, introduce children aged six to 12 to the concept of MAiD. Such is the concern over aggressive marketing that anti-MAiD campaigners are encouraging Canadian citizens to carry ‘Do Not Euthanise’ (DNE) cards.
The Canadian collective mindset has already rewired to consider MAiD a dignified option. It is sold through a complicit media as a citizen’s duty not to be a burden and users are told it is a painless way to die. Some disagree.
In the procedure, patients are first paralysed with the coma-inducing drug profofol, so they cannot move or speak, followed by midazolam to reduce anxiety, and rocuronium, a muscle relaxant. These drugs were not licensed to induce death but are used in overdose to euthanise the patient.
According to testimony from anaesthetist Dr Joel Zivot, Associate Professor at Emory University School of Medicine, Vancouver: ‘MAiD deaths could be painful, akin to drowning – death by waterboarding. Muscle relaxants when used in MAiD will produce death by suffocation, while producing an outwardly observed stillness as a consequence of muscle paralysis. That has wrongly and repeatedly been described as a state of peacefulness.
‘Midazolam has been associated with the findings of lung congestion as seen in autopsy. Propofol may or may not induce a lack of awareness and likely causes burning in the lung tissue.
‘This analysis is based on autopsies of prisoners executed in the US with a similar cocktail to MAiD drugs, that includes Midazolam. They showed that in 85 per cent of cases, the lungs had filled with fluid.’ Dr Zivot added: ‘The MAiD technique is strikingly similar.’
The then Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau sanctioned MAiD in June 2016, just a year after he took office. There are 40million people in Canada and MAiD took off sharply. Government statistics show that in 2016, 1,018 people were ‘maided’, a figure which increased by almost 300 per cent by the following year, 2017, to 3,856. In 2023, 62,118 people died by assisted suicide, a staggering 6,000 per cent increase since inception. Quebec boasted the most MAiD deaths, 37 per cent, despite holding 22 per cent of Canada’s population.
By 2022, MAiD had tied with brain disease as the fifth leading cause of death in Canada. Only deaths from cancer, heart disease, covid-19 and accidents exceeded the number of MAiD deaths.
Critics say MAiD is slowly replacing quality medical care for the chronically ill. It is also being sold to the poor who struggle to support themselves. Those with mental health issues as a sole condition can request MAiD.
Montreal GP Dr Ramona Coelho said: ‘It’s quicker to get MAiD than specialist care.’ A MAiD team will pay house calls within 24 hours, while doctors’ house calls are extremely rare with many on long waiting lists for treatment.
A single mother of three boys, Rose Finlay, 34, has used a wheelchair since a diving accident at the age of 17. She began suffering recurrent infections after she lost her full-time carers in 2023, and struggled to get treatment from Canada’s publicly funded healthcare system. Ms Finlay applied to Ontario’s Disability Support Program (ODSP) for help and said she was told that it would take six to eight months to approve her application. The government website says the approval period for MAiD is 90 days, less if a patient faces losing capacity. Ms Finlay said: ‘That tells me that it is easier to let disabled people go than to give them the assistance they need.’
Safeguards are supposedly in place, but an investigation in Ontario identified more than 400 compliance issues, ranging from broken safeguards to patients euthanised who may not have been capable of consent.
Angelina Ireland, President of the Delta Hospice Society, agrees that MAiD is being used as an alternative to social or medical support. Her 91-year-old mother was offered MAiD in hospital when she needed skin grafts to repair burns. She is not alone. The average age of death by MAiD is 76, and Ms Ireland said: ‘They’re recruiting among the elderly population waiting in ERs for treatment.’
Psychiatrist Dr John Maher, editor-in-chief of the Journal of Ethics and Mental Health, said one of his patients was hijacked. He said: ‘I was in the middle of treating a patient in a medical trial. Their family doctor “kindly” offered them MAiD. The patient said, “Yes, why don’t I just die?” It seems to me that offering death to people in moments of greatest vulnerability and fragility is profoundly unethical.’
All avenues to sanctuary are being shut. Ms Ireland, a cancer survivor, raised around £4.3million to build a Delta Hospice, a ten-bedroom palliative care facility adjacent to the Delta Hospital in Ladner, British Columbia. They had been operational for ten years when in 2016 government officials said they needed to offer residents MAiD. Ms Ireland told them: ‘“We offer palliative care.” They said if you don’t offer MAiD, we’ll stop giving you money. We said that’s fine, we don’t need your money. As soon as we started to resist, the government cancelled our lease which had 25 years left and took over our facility. It now offers MAiD.’
Suicide is against many religions, and church hospitals offered a refuge for the sick not wanting MAiD. That refuge was soon circumvented. St Paul’s, a Catholic hospital in Vancouver, refused to deliver MAiD to its patients. In 2023, the parents of terminally ill Samantha Neil, 34, who had cancer, sued St Paul’s for not providing MAiD. She was moved to a facility that did. They said Samantha suffered unnecessarily during the 12 km drive to another hospital because MAiD was refused. As a result of that case, a MAiD facility was opened next door to St Paul’s.
Ms Ireland describes MAiD as ‘non-culpable homicide’, as Section 241 of the Criminal Code which governs it gives doctors and nurses immunity from prosecution for murder. She also describes it as a ‘Canadian cull’, enforced as the country has £1.9trillion debt and their healthcare system is overwhelmed due to a 5-6 million surge in immigrants.
More shocking is the plan to recruit children to MAiD. Ms Ireland said: ‘Parental rights in Canada have been eroded to the point of being abolished, primarily through the Trojan horse of transgender legislation.’ She cites a father imprisoned for speaking out for his 13-year-old daughter’s planned transition to a male. The school had changed her name and socially transitioned her without telling him.
Ms Ireland added: ‘In Canada, we have “mature minors”, age 12 to 18, deemed capable of making their own medical decisions. The charity Dying with Dignity are actively campaigning for mature minors’ right to MAiD. MAiD is no different from the T4 scheme in Nazi Germany set up to kill people with mental and physical disabilities and create an Aryan race. One thing is certain, if doctors had not got behind MAiD like they did in Germany, it would not have taken off.’
