By: Shafer Parker

A headline from an American online news source made me realise I had to write a blog about the Death Cult’s rapid takeover of Canadian healthcare. Here’s the headline: “Doctors Advised to Suggest Suicide to Patients as Canada Runs Out of Basic Painkillers.” You should read the article yourself in order to personally experience the shock of hearing Canadian health professionals recommend doctor induced death, rather than make available such basic painkillers as ibuprofen and acetaminophen. And who advised this course of action to our nation’s “healers?” None other than the Canadian Association of MAiD Assessors and Providers (CAMAP, MAiD is Medical Assistance in Dying).

For those who believe in the sanctity of human life, CAMAP’s origins are quite concerning. This is not a government agency. Rather it is made up of a wide spectrum of enthusiast medical practitioners who, once MAiD became law in 2016, seized the opportunity to develop a national representative body to “advocate” for death dealers’ “unique needs.” As I said, it is not a government agency, but it works hand-in-glove with a government that is, as I will demonstrate momentarily, hard at work to expand the range of available patients for these “assessors and providers.”

Btw, do you see how this works? Have you ever met a house painter who assessed your house and decided it didn’t need painting? Have you ever met a duct cleaner prepared to say your ducts were already clean enough? Does it surprise you, then, to learn that the CAMAP death assessors regularly advise that more and more people need the services they provide? Do you think I’m exaggerating their impact or intent? Then ask yourself, what kind of doctor, faced with an induced shortage of ordinary painkillers, leaps to the conclusion that death is the best solution.

I will come back to that question, but first, let me introduce you to my long-time friend, Dr. Heidi Janz, Ph.D., Associate Adjunct Professor at the John Dossetor Health Ethics Centre, University of Alberta. Born with cerebral palsy, Heidi testified two years ago before the Parliamentary Justice Committee studying Bill C-7, which expanded eligibility for MAiD to include persons with illnesses and disabilities, even for those whose deaths were not reasonably foreseeable. This was a huge change from the 2016 law that required an imminent death before okaying MAiD. In spite of the best efforts of many, C-7 is now law.

Nevertheless, Heidi’s advocacy for disability rights continues. Just this past October she was invited to go to Halifax to speak as a panellist at the 46th annual conference of the Canadian Institute for the Administration of Justice. The theme this year was “The Right to Dignity in Canadian Law,” and Heidi’s panel dealt with “The Systemic Ableism Within the Context of COVID-19 and Medical Assistance in Dying.” As a life-long quadriplegic, she is uniquely qualified to speak to the issue, and as a published novelist and playwright, she is uniquely gifted for saying what needs to be said. What follows are her words.

Like many of the healthcare responses to COVID-19, the expansion of eligibility for MAiD in Canada to include people with disabilities who are not at end-of-life is demonstrably rooted in medical ableism (prejudice against people with demonstrable disabilities). To begin with, as healthcare professionals, MAiD assessors are not immune to the prevalent influence of medical ableism rooted in eugenic logic. This becomes particularly significant when studies consistently demonstrate that healthcare professionals who provide care to disabled individuals are often more pessimistic and upset about their charges’ prognoses than the affected individuals themselves. Some may argue that this is essentially a moot point because people with disabilities meet with MAID assessors only after they have already applied for MAiD.

However, such an argument fails to consider that, among other things, MAiD assessors are tasked with determining “the greatest source of suffering” that is prompting a person’s request for MAiD. MAiD assessors afflicted with undiagnosed ableism are likely to automatically view the existence of disability, in and of itself, as the greatest source of a person’s suffering. They thus risk conflating suffering stemming from remediable social conditions, such as poverty and the lack of affordable, accessible housing, and community-based, user-directed personal support services, with the “irremediable” presence of disability.

No kidding. As I said earlier, like assessors and providers in every field of human endeavour, death assessors always find a reason to grow their business, in this case, since their business is killing, to take another life.  In her talks, Heidi provides plenty of examples of people bullied into asking for MAiD, not because they are through living, but simply because they were given no hope that reasonable, but necessary care would ever be offered. Sophia, for example, was a 51-year-old Ontario woman with severe chemical sensitivities who “chose” medically assisted death after a desperate, two-year search for affordable housing free of cigarette smoke and chemical cleaners.

The case of Chris Gladders, who lived in a retirement home in Niagara Falls’ Greycliff Manor is, if possible, far worse. Gladders suffered from Fabry’s disease, a unique genetic disorder that causes a higher risk for heart attacks, strokes, and serious kidney problems. After suffering a severe stroke Gladders was sent off to Greycliff, a facility that was demonstrably incapable of handling his complex needs. When Gladders was finally allowed a visit from his brother the day before his scheduled death—this was at the height of the COVID lockdown—he was found lying in filthy sheets with the floor covered in urine and feces, as well as a bucket overflowing with used diapers and medical waste. At his request, Gladders (35) was euthanized on January 23, 2021.

“What happened to Gladders is nothing less than eugenics disguised as autonomy,” Heidi says. “It’s a classic example of Hobson’s choice, in which a person is supposedly offered a free choice, but where, in fact, only one thing is offered.” After months of living in pain and squalor, essentially a prisoner in a supposed care facility, to a person like Gladders, MAiD looked like the only way out.

Sadly, this sad situation in Canada is only getting sadder. Just last month Dr. Louis Roy, from the Quebec College of Physicians told the Commons’ Special Joint Committee on Medical Assistance in Dying that he believes MAiD is acceptable for infants up to a year in age, but only if they are born with “severe malformations” and “grave and severe syndromes” where their “prospective of survival is null, so to speak.” You don’t have to be a genius to figure out that these mild limitations will be quickly brushed aside. But God forbid anyone should ever utter the word infanticide. This is MAiD, not murder.

Thankfully, the Euthanasia Prevention Coalition reports in an article by Judith Robinson that against CAMAP and its fellow travellers stands a group of over 1,400 Canadian doctors calling themselves Physicians Together with Vulnerable Canadians (PTVC). The doctors who’ve signed the PTVC statement (see their website for the full text) mince no words in their opposition to the direction taken by the current Canadian government. “This is not the medicine we have devoted our lives to practising,” the statement reads. “We watch in utter dismay and horror at how the nature of our medical profession has been so quickly destroyed by the creation of misguided laws.”

As is so often the case, the love of money is at the root of this evil. According to The Spectator UK, the government-supported Canadian euthanasia movement is all about saving money. “The old MAiD regime saved $86.9 million per year,” the Spectator states in a recent article, and notes a Canadian Parliamentary report referred to the savings as a “net cost reduction” in healthcare. And according to the same source, if passed, Bill C-7 is expected to save the government another $62 million per year.

The callous disregard for the value of human life doesn’t stop there. With Canadian government officials likely congratulating themselves as “leaders” in dealing with an overpopulated world, the irony is that under-populated Canada has become one of only seven countries in the world to allow doctors to directly kill their patients with lethal drug cocktails. Where similar laws prevail in other nations, would-be suicides are required to administer the drugs themselves. And to distinguish our nation even further, Canada is the only jurisdiction in the world that permits nurse practitioners to administer MAiD.

Ordinarily an article such as this would end with a call to action, but I’m going to assume that if you have read this far with understanding, you already know something you can do. Let me end, then, with this. Never forget that euthanasia is now so widely promoted in our country that soon no segment of the population will be safe from its ravages. Moreover, our nation now has a government-approved professional medical organisation, CAMAP, that advises doctors they “have a duty to initiate talks with patients about MAiD,” rather than waiting for them to broach the subject as the law originally required. Because Faith Beyond Belief approaches everything from a Biblical worldview, it becomes my duty to end with the reminder that if Canada does not reverse course and begin anew to honour human life from conception to natural death, we can expect nothing in future but the wrath of God.

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