Assisted suicide law should be expanded to include children, a Canadian parliamentary committee has said.
The Special Joint Committee on Medical Assistance in Dying (MAID) recommended that “mature minors” and “individuals whose sole underlying medical condition is a mental disorder” should be eligible.
A Bill to postpone the expansion of MAID for those with mental illness until March 2024 is currently before the Senate and is expected to pass, but campaigners have called for the change to be rejected, not just delayed.
Reckless idea
We don’t just need to delay this dangerous expansion of assisted suicide. We need to reject it entirely.
MP Mark Strahl criticised the “reckless idea” to expand assisted suicide rather than protecting vulnerable people by offering the support they need.
He said: “We don’t just need to delay this dangerous expansion of assisted suicide. We need to reject it entirely.”
Strahl told the House of Commons that the Government “should focus on offering treatment and help, not assisted death, to those who are suffering.
“This is a matter of life and death and we must act to protect vulnerable people, once and for all.”
Most permissive
The Euthanasia Prevention Coalition warned that the Committee’s recommendation would “give Canada the most permissive euthanasia law in the world”.
He said: “Given the current state of Canada, where vulnerable people continue to be pressured [into] euthanasia on a frequent basis, it is inappropriate for the government to consider these radical expansions to the euthanasia law.”
Columnist: ‘Scotland at risk of nightmarish Canadian-style assisted suicide’
Canada’s euthanasia programme prompts ‘liberal columnist’ to rethink assisted suicide
