Assisted suicide offered to homeless people in Canada

[gnarlynarwhal]

I came across an article online about this earlier today and I’m shocked this is seen as acceptable by so many people in Canada. It’s advertised on the tv over there as if it’s a perfectly acceptable thing to do. The National Post is claiming that one third of Canadians think that it’s perfectly acceptable to approve medical assistance in dying ‘MAID’ to healthy people purely because they are impoverished. I find it really saddening.

It is not something that should be offered to anyone. It should be something that people have to seek out, with plenty of hurdles along the way.

Being homeless is not a medical condition, or something that is terminal. With the right support, it is something that can be overcome (although whether that support exists is another matter).

And to be very blunt, it is not hard to rapidly dispatch yourself without getting something like MAID involved.

Ardern, Sturgeon, Drakeford...all part of the hashtag-Be-Kind mob are thankfully now gone...how long before Trudeau follows?

Something along the lines of helping the climate?

''End Your Carbon Footprint!
We send you off in as little as one month in a 'free'* biodegradable cardboard coffin and you are happy in the knowledge you are no longer contributing to the climate crisis!

*in some cases costs may be charged to living relatives.''

I just googled the article source and it took about three seconds to come up with the information that it's a right-leaning publication.

I would be very sceptical of what the actual situation is. It sounds very conveniently sensational that Canada is supposedly offering euthanasia as a solution for homelessness. I expect the reality is much more nuanced!

I’m not completely against assisted suicide but I worry about vulnerable people being coerced into doing so when they don’t really want to.

Everyone has a right to a place they can call home. No one should be starving or feel that despite being healthy there isn’t any other option.

I grow ever more disgusted by what I hear of Canada.

^

Do you live over there??

My uncle, my mother's brother is Canadian. He emigrated there when he was twenty one and now he is eighty three. He is an amazing man, a scientist who has worked on cures for cancer amongst other things.

Now, he lives in fear of being 'put down' as he calls it. If you don't have enough money to support yourself in old age the government will offer you it. What he is worried about is something like breaking a hip and ending up in hospital and one of his adult children agreeing to it. It's horrifying.

If somebody doesn’t think their life is worth living because of their living circumstances, who is anyone else to force them to continue on?

Do you not think resources would be better spent addressing their living circumstances rather than leap immediately to handing them a loaded gun?

I expect the reality is much more nuanced!
^

Finally a bit of sense from Bertie

Canada fuck up everytime. I used to support assisted dying until I saw the mess they’d made of it.

I'm really surprised and disappointed at a lot of things I hear about Canada these days. MAID is one of them. I've heard of chronically ill people offered it just because they had nobody to look after them. It's just grim.

I read the article. It is about the results of a poll, not homeless people actually being offered Assisted Suicide. Have I missed a bit or is this the wrong link OP?

Like many of the issues we are facing, this transcends right- and left-wing. That's why it's normally a conscience vote for politicians.

Why people believe that reading or considering all sources is a bad thing is beyond me. I've read all sorts of dreadful things in pursuit of understanding and measured thought. Just believing what the Guardian tells me to believe isn't good enough any more.

www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/christine-gauthier-paralympian-euthanasia-canada-b2238319.html

Simply solve economic problems by bumping off anyone who isn't fit and well.

Well!
18% are voting the OP is being unreasonable to be against this 😯

I would take the article with a pinch of salt- it's not being reported by any other newspaper, and The National Post has been confirmed to have published fake news in the past, and been forced to apologise for it.

Also, your title post is very misleasing- the Canadian government are not offering it as an option to homeless people!

Here’s the research that the article links - I can’t see where it includes that homeless people should have the option?

https://researchco.ca/wp-content/uploads/2023/05/Tables_MAiD_CAN_05May2023.pdf

it seems more generally about agreeing with assisted suicide if terminally ill etc. But I guess that’s not such a punchy headline.

Also it’s hardly ‘a third of Canadians’ the whole of Canada didn’t do this poll did they?

And how long will it be before they are allowing relatives to make the decision for relatives with dementia or disabilities. And how many older people will be coerced into it by unscrupulous relatives?
That is why I am firmly against making it legal because the boundaries will be pushed further and further .

Well, no. I am Dutch, and while there have been cases of assisted suicide for mental health reasons, these have been very rare and have all involved people who have lived with severe mental illness for decades with no improvement. This begs the question (which none of the opponents ever seem able to answer) of how long they consider to be long enough for someone with severe and intractable mental illness to suffer before they are allowed to step out? Five years? Ten? Twenty? Why is that OK for someone with depression but not someone with cancer?

It is also patronising and legally incorrect to assume someone with mental illness is always incapable of making hat decision. Read up on the Mental Health Act and the Mental Capacity Act.

Assisted dying in the area of mental illness is complex. Canada is getting it very wrong. But other countries are doing better, and just because something is difficult, that doesn't mean it should be shut down and given a hard no.

Horrendous.

Agreed. Australia and Ireland I was very surprised with during covid. I had them as defiant cultures dare I say 'macho' if you know what I mean, willing to fight against authority and oppression. But no, the way they meekly lapped up the most daftest of COVID restrictions was embarrassing.

I have elderly relatives in Ireland and they had their jabs and their COVID passes and once things opened up could sit in restaurants and travel etc, whilst the younger ones who hadn't had their vaccines had to be served outside like 2nd class citizens and couldn't go on holiday and yet they thought this was perfectly acceptable.

I feel its a bit grim and reflects badly on their society.

Also no one can block / force anyone who wants to take their own life not to do so. I know so many people who have ( sometimes on Total whim it seems) killed themselves easily in seconds. The tie between life and death is very easily severed.

However this is offering up the option to vulnerable people who it might not have occurred too. I think if someone had offered death to my eldest before he was 16 he would have chosen assisted death. Doesn't mean its OK. Doesn't mean it's forcibly removing the option of death by not being on offer. He's vulnerable. Death should never be a viable solution to a shirty situation.

My life's hard with 4 kids with sen, I could offered my out too. Then what happens to my kids? They are the burdon, do they get offered out too?

Assisted suicide needs to be medical reasons. Not social problems.

The article isn’t about forcing anyone or anything it’s an opinion poll.

People where asked if they would support it being allowed for X reason or Y reason people answered. Its not an actual oh your homeless here swallow this.

For some people it doesn’t matter how much you help them, they will always end up back on the streets because they cannot cope with a “normal” life. If they want to decide to die that’s their choice and it should be up to them.

A lot of people if given the option of a nice calm peaceful death would take it who wouldn’t do a traumatising suicide attempt. It doesn’t mean those people want to be alive or are happy to be alive or want to be fixed they just can’t bring themselves to actually have to kill themselves leaving someone to unexpectedly find them or cause their death.

The research says 27%. It’s in a poll with lots of questions. I wondering what the result would have been if just that question was asked.

I agree, my point was to be aware of bias. And there is a left/right lean on the issue of assisted suicide - right wing tend to be anti it or claim it's being used for spurious reasons, whereas left wing tend to be pro or claim it's only ever used for good. The reality is generally somewhere in the middle.