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OMG! Canada!

December 15, 2022   ·   1 Comments

By Constance Scrafield

“I’m someone from the United States and I was watching this thing on TV about a woman in a wheelchair in Canada, who was trying to get some help and the Canadian government was offering to euthanize her. And I thought what is going on in Canada?” This, from a chap who had just appeared in a Twitter space dealing with disability, in which Patricia participates.

Zoom ahead to picture this: a disabled person, who has been living in the rough area of any city, not necessarily rough but impoverished, tatty little dwellings owned by disinterested landlords who care nothing for their tenants except to push them for as much rent as those desperate spaces allow, then push them out when there is simply not enough money to support life and limb.

The disabled person on the bed has pleaded with disinterested officials who did their bit to humiliate and debase that person with ridiculous questions about jewellery or cash or supportive partners. None of the answers served and no official offered help but did offer another way out: MAID: medical assistance in dying.

The disabled person’s claim, “I don’t want to die.” has been diverted by the improbability that the required support is likely to be offered by a government that promises but does not deliver.

In a movie, the bed upon which the disabled person is lying faces a huge screen where a very wide and wonderful moving nature scene is displayed. The disabled person has not experienced such beauty for many years. There are trees and wide swaths of grassy meadows down to visions of an ocean, its peaceful roll of waves smoothing the sandy shore. Music of such tenderness is playing and, somehow, there is a whisper of how everything can be beautiful – even the end of a life.

Wait a minute, isn’t there an advertisement on television about that – about how everything can be beautiful – even the end of a person’s life? An ad for MAID, erroneously promoted the suicide of Jennyfer, a woman in B.C. who accepted MAID because she was assured she would not be granted the kind of assistance she needed to live a reasonable life.

Here: B.C. woman behind ‘dystopian’ commercial found ‘death care …

https://bc.ctvnews.ca › b-c-woman-behind-dystopian-com.

Let us go the distance. Death, welcomed or resisted and then accepted as a defeat, not only for the person who has accepted an unwanted, possibly sentimental death but also for a system, a nation that accepted the idea of “putting people down” rather than caring for them; she called it “death care” as opposed to healthcare.

Not done yet, for now those who have chosen MAID as an alternative to being cared for so they can live – hear this: are now a source of organs for transplanting. There is an article about it: https://ottawacitizen.com/news/local-news/medically-assisted-deaths-prove-a-growing-boon-to-organ-donation-in-ontario

What are we doing?

First of all, there are people who have requested MAID as an alternative to a long and painful illness, inevitably resulting in foreseeable death. It has been agreed to, in these cases, as humanitarian and thereby justified, worldwide.

Secondly, in contrast, for the last three years here in Canada that we know of, MAID has also been seen as a more economical way of dealing with people, who could live comfortable lives if the supports were there, to people who are offered MAID, effectively not only saving the government considerable funds but now presenting a source of organs.

Yes, the article talks about how happy those dying people are that their organs can give life to others…

What are we doing?

Since 2017, the number of disabled people in Canada has increased from one in five to one in four. It is the case that any one of us can be rendered disabled very easily by accident, genetics, age, environment – a long list of consequences. 

How crazy is it for our Prime Minister to talk about how valuable are the disabled, how obvious is it to care for them so that they no longer worry about the basics, or even better than the basics, to release their inventiveness, their entrepreneurial abilities, their individual and collective wisdom and their special connection to empathy, born of their own troubles, for it then not to be the case? For the future of disabled people to necessarily struggle and so often unsuccessfully for that fairy tale of equality…

When the alternative is saving so much public money and as a possible source of organs. Justin Trudeau is a handsome man, with a silky presentation. He is far and away the best candidate for leader of this country than any of the other options: the Conservative party with their not-so-back benchers who would bring abortion back to the table; whose environmental policies shirk from the climate crisis we are facing?

The NDP that has lost its way, with good intentions but without the nerve to push for them?

Hope could lay with the Green Party. Elizabeth May and her new running mate, her deputy leader at the moment, Jonathan Pedneault have their work cut out for them but they must forge ahead and influence for the better an increasingly dystopian world.

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