by Fleur Elizabeth Meston, spiked
Euthanasia is now Canadians’ go-to solution to poverty, disabilities and mental-health struggles.
If you want to glimpse Britain’s potential dark future, look west to Canada.
In 2016, Canada legalised Medical Assistance in Dying (MAID) for the terminally ill. MAID was sold as a state-controlled solution to suffering, and came with all the usual reassurances that it was intended only for the dying, the desperate, and those with few other alternatives. Ten years on, it’s a machine for death.
Now, people with chronic illness, disability or even depression can be legally euthanised via MAID. Soon, those with any mental illness will qualify. Minors could be next. If any ‘safeguards’ existed, they have long since dissolved.
If Keir Starmer’s government gets its way, Britain could be in line for its own ill-defined, industrial-scale assisted-suicide policy. After all, Canada’s campaigners started from a suspiciously similar place to their UK counterparts, who insist that assisted suicide is about empathy and agency. Look where things ended up.
In 2022, 13,241 Canadians died through MAID. That’s 4.1 per cent of all annual deaths. The UK equivalent would be around 30,000 deaths a year. A third of Canadians who sought MAID cited ‘being a burden’ among their reasons for wanting to die. If we follow Canada’s lead, there is a danger that vulnerable and elderly people, as well as those with disabilities, will feel obliged to consider assisted suicide so as to relieve pressure on their loved ones. This is not so much a clear-headed ‘choice’ as an escape hatch from shame.