Retired Army Corporal Christine Gauthier testified before Canada's House of Commons veterans committee last week that she was shocked when the Veterans Affairs Canada (VAC) employee offered her assisted suicide as a solution to her suffering.

Gauthier, who competed for Canada at the 2016 Rio de Janeiro Paralympics, lost the use of her legs after suffering an injury during military training in 1989. She is a five-time world champion paracanoeist who also competed in this year's Invictus Games.

Gauthier told the MPs that she has fought for wheelchair accommodation for five years, according to CBC.ca.

"I have a letter saying that if you're so desperate, madam, we can offer you MAID, medical assistance in dying," Gauthier said, according to the outlet. She agreed to provide a copy of the letter to the MPs, the outlet reported.

"I was like, ‘I can't believe that you will … give me an injection to help me die, but you will not give me the tools I need to help me live,'" Gauthier said in a 2 December interview with Global News.

"It was really shocking to hear that kind of comment."

"Absolutely unacceptable" ordeal

"I sent a letter to Prime Minister Trudeau to say that they [Veterans Affairs] offered me MAID and would supply equipment," said Gauthier.

Gauthier's ordeal is "absolutely unacceptable," Trudeau said Friday.

"We are following up with investigations, and we are changing protocols to ensure what should seem obvious to all of us: that it is not the place of Veterans Affairs Canada, who are supposed to be there to support those people who stepped up to serve their country, to offer them medical assistance in dying," added the prime minister.

In testimony before the same committee last week, Veterans Minister Lawrence MacAulay revealed at least four other Canadian military veterans were offered the MAID option by a now-suspended veterans service agent. The cases have been referred to the Royal Canadian Mounted Police.

Medical assistance in dying has been legal in Canada since 2016 for terminally ill residents.

The law was expanded in 2022 to people living with debilitating disabilities or pain, even if their lives aren't at immediate risk.

Sources

National Catholic Register

New York Post

CathNews New Zealand

Amir Farsoud lives with never-ending agony from a back injury years ago. He tells CityNews at its worst he is "crying like a 5-year-old and not sleeping for days in a row." Farsoud also takes medication for depression and anxiety.

He describes his quality of life as "awful, non-existent and terrible … I do nothing other than manage pain."

But Farsoud said his quality of life is not the reason he is applying for MAiD. He applied because he is currently in danger of losing his housing and fears being homeless over dying. "It's not my first choice."

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Debate rages over whether a doctor may reasonably say patients with depression, schizophrenia or bipolar disorder have realistic recovery prospects.

Experts are debating if the mentally ill have the ability to consent to end their life, the National Post reports. There are concerns the availability of euthanasia and assisted suicide will make it harder to treat those with mental illness.

The legislation will take effect in March 2023 and has stripped the requirement that a person seeking euthanasia or assisted suicide must have a "reasonably foreseeable" death. It now allows someone to seek legal euthanasia or assisted suicide even if mental illness is their sole underlying condition.

The legislation was written in response to a 2019 Quebec Superior Court decision which found that limiting euthanasia and assisted suicide only to people with "reasonably foreseeable" deaths was a violation of human rights.

Canada's Catholic bishops have strongly opposed the 2021 legislation.

"Our position remains unequivocal. Euthanasia and assisted suicide constitute the deliberate killing of human life in violation of God's Commandments. They erode our shared dignity by failing to see, to accept, and accompany those suffering and dying," Archbishop Richard Gagnon of Winnipeg, then-president of the Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops, said in an April 9 2021 letter.

Dr Viren Naik, medical director for the medical aid-in-dying programme in the Ottawa area, told the National Post that most providers are unwilling to see patients not in danger of imminent death but who still wish to be assessed for euthanasia or assisted suicide.

Many parts of Canada lack psychiatrists to treat mental illness. Fewer still are available to assess a patient for a euthanasia or assisted suicide request, the National Post reported.

Dr Sonu Gaind, a past president of the Canadian Psychiatric Association, told the National Post, "There's no doubt that mental illnesses lead to grievous suffering. That suffering can be even more grievous in some cases than other illnesses."

"It's the irremediability part that our framework also requires and that scientifically cannot be met. That we cannot do. That's the problem."

Depression, he noted, affects a patient's outlook on the future.

"You don't think about the future the same way. You see nothing. And there's that hopelessness," he said.

Archbishop Gangon, in his letter on behalf of Canada's Catholic bishops' conference, expressed concern that the new law will result in those with mental illness or disabilities being pressured into ending their lives. The legislation did not include conscience protections for medical professionals not wishing to participate in euthanasia or assisted suicide.

There has also been legal pressure on hospices with a history of opposing assisted suicide or euthanasia. That includes hospices with an explicitly Christian identity.

Sources

Catholic News Agency

National Post