Regardless of the program implemented there will be someone gatekeeping it. How about we just leave MAID to the patient and their doctor to decide. It was a great thing for my brother when he was dying from ALS it would not have been kind to let him suffer for a few more months. If you are against MAID then don’t use it.

I’ve known two people who used MAID to end their lives. Both had terminal illnesses that were heading towards protracted, painful, debilitating ends. They used MAID ro end their lives on their terms and because they didn’t want to live through that or to put their families through it.

To me, their access to MAID absolutely provided more humane, dignified, caring treatment than they would have had in being forced to live through what they were facing.

Their cases were pretty clear cut imo, but I understand there are much less clear cut circumstances and situations where concerns over mental health and necessity of MAID vs alternatives requires much more challenging judgment. It’s not straightforward and clear cut in all circumstances. You never want to throw the baby out with the bathwater on either side of this issue, be it needlessly enforcing suffering or needlessly ending a life.

What that indicates to me is MAID is a good thing to have, but we just really need to invest in quality research and policy development, and that includes research and investment into ensuring the system of administration is well-designed and well-maintained in accordance with the research and humane ethics. As long as we keep doing that, we’re taking the right approach to do the best we can.

I don’t know if we have the right implementation.

What I do know is being able to choose when to die should be a human right. I’ve updated my will to give power of attorney, we just went over my wife’s parent’s will to also provide guidance for MAID. I’ve seen my grandmother not eat and die slowly over a week, and I think that’s just not fair.

Now, I also think we should:

• Stop treating disabled people like moochers, and start treating them like humans. We need to fix our benefit systems. My sister is disabled and it’s fucking stupid that she’d be worse off with a job, or that we need to set up special trusts to handle money for her.
• Stop private ownership of Long Term Care homes. Have you ever been to a fucking LTC home? They’re fucking expensive and under staffed. If you don’t have someone constantly advocating for you, you’re going to get treated like shit and ignored. it is fucking awful and it needs to end. And this is not on the staff. There are some wonderful people doing these jobs, and they’re oveworked and abused by their employers.
• Fund Mental Health treatment. We do not fund this field, we have a shortage of qualified professionals, and they charge a lot. It’s unacceptable. The government picking up the slack so that we can hire the right number of people would be a huge win.
• Cover medication in our single payer system.
• Put serious consequences for companies that try to renege pensions that leave the elderly destitute. The Bay dissolving their pensions should have resulted in jail time.

I don’t know if everywhere else in Canada is the same, but LTC in Ontario is a crime. It should have ended with Covid when they had to bring the army in to manage LTC homes.

And frankly, I think the UN with their shit morals needs to back the fuck off.

I know that I might get downvoted for saying this, but I think the UN is right on this one. We should stop expanding this program.

The federal government has been considering expanding MAiD so that people with mental illness as their only underlying medical condition could qualify.

Am I the only one that thinks this is going too far? I thought it was generally considered a good thing that, if someone is suffering from suicide ideation, you talk them off the ledge. That’s why we have suicide prevention programs, suicide hotlines, etc. This seems like a reversal of this attitude. It’s saying, “oh, you’re depressed, and you want to kill yourself? Okay, let’s make that easier for you.” This is not healthcare.

We also need to consider how this impacts marginalized communities, like for example Inuit communities in Nunavut, where suicide is considered a crisis .