Bill C-7 introduces medical assistance in dying as an option for people who are not nearing death, provided that they have a disability or disabling medical condition. To the dismay of many disability rights advocates, the bill passed third reading at the House of Commons on International Human Rights Day, December 10th. It is now before the Senate.
Senators are being asked to do the delicate work of reviewing this proposed legislation and in particular of considering minority interests under immense pressure. While the Attorney General has formally requested an extension to the stay provided by the Quebec Superior Court in the Truchon decision as a fallback, the government and indeed some Senators are pushing to have the Senate endorse Bill C-7 before December 18th.
In these tense and charged circumstances, a number of sweeping assertions about Bill C-7 are being introduced into the debate. Many directly oppose the wisdom of the Vulnerable Persons Standard which holds that an end of life requirement is critical to protecting and equally valuing disadvantaged and stigmatized persons like people with disabilities.
Myth: Bill C-7 promotes autonomy
Advocates for the expansion of MAiD proclaim that nobody will be forced to receive MAiD - that it is only an option for those who choose it for themselves. In response, speaking before the Justice Committee, Catherine Frazee asked “Why only us? Why only people whose bodies are altered or painful or in decline? Why not everyone who lives outside the margins of a decent life, everyone who resorts to an overdose, a high bridge, a shotgun carried out to the woods? Why not everyone who decides that their quality-of-life is in the ditch?” Frazee has highlighted that we don’t stand behind that choice. We intervene, sometimes forcibly, when people choose suicide.
Cabinet Ministers have been confronted by the very real prospect that people with disabilities would turn to MAiD precisely because their autonomy is limited by systems and services that have failed them. Sadly, the stories of Sean Tagert and Archie Rolland already demonstrate this reality even while MAiD has been limited to end of life circumstances. And yet, these Cabinet Ministers have argued that Canada must not prevent people with disabilities from choosing MAiD, because this, in their eyes, would layer on the harm of restricting choices in life and again in death. This may seem ethical at first glance. However, #Whyus advocate Erin Clark understands this reasoning to be an act of violence against people with disabilities. Clark asks why start with MAiD:
“Supporters see themselves as alleviators of ‘The Great Pain,’ liberators of the powerless, and out of the force of their virtue they can’t wait to extend this great privilege of a noble death to all disabled people in the country. Because they care about our autonomy? Autonomy is not much of a concern when we want to get married, or live in our communities, or have jobs, or get on buses or be supported by the latest adaptive technology and get wheelchairs or oxygen tanks. Then our autonomy is far too inconvenient and expensive. But if what we want to do with our autonomy is choose to die, then it is suddenly our greatest, most precious right.”
Myth: “Protecting” people with disabilities is paternalistic
Disability rights advocates across the country are being discredited for being paternalistic. However, protection from discrimination is at the very heart of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. Is the Charter itself paternalistic?
Lawyers Isabel Grant, Archie Kaiser and Elizabeth Sheehy have explained how Bill C-7 “directly violates s 15 of our Charter because it denies people with disabilities equal protection of the law by removing an important safeguard—the reasonable foreseeability of death—provided to everyone else in this country.” They further note that the bill “falls embarrassingly short of Canada’s international obligations regarding the rights of people with disabilities.”
Nicolas Rouleau has critiqued the bill saying that “by expanding MAiD for Canadians with disabilities (but not for other Canadians), the government sends the powerful and discriminatory message that Canadians with disabilities — and only these Canadians — are unessential. By rushing the debate on MAiD, the government sends the further message that it doesn’t care.”
Defending human rights and fighting discrimination is not paternalistic. Especially not when Canada’s disability rights movement is shouting its opposition to Bill C-7 from the rooftops.
