News/Commentary

Canadian Paralympian, veteran offered assisted suicide as country euthanizes 10,000 citizens a year: Report

December 7, 2022 | | Print Article

Canada has implemented assisted suicide and lately has been allegedly targeting veterans, with one retired Army veteran and Paralympian named Christine Gauthier horrifically being offered euthanasia when she could not secure a stairlift for her home.

(Video Credit: CBC News)

According to writer Tom Leonard over at Daily Mail, Canada is using assisted suicide to euthanize 10,000 citizens a year.

“Anyone who ever thought that the compassionate response to extreme human suffering is a society that helps people find permanent release from their pain may want to look at some of the horror stories coming out of Canada recently,” he wrote.

“To be clear, euthanasia laws in the US are nothing like those of its neighbor to the north. But American acceptance of the practice has been growing for decades despite warnings that legalized suicide is a slippery slope toward a calamitous debasement of human life,” Leonard warned.

He went on to point to the fact that Canada considers itself extremely open-minded and tolerant… if you will “progressive.” It ostensibly has the most permissive rules in the world in regard to euthanasia and the author calls the results “terrifying.”

“Last year, more than 10,000 people in Canada – astonishingly that’s over three percent of all deaths there – ended their lives via euthanasia, an increase of a third on the previous year. And it’s likely to keep rising: next year, Canada is set to allow people to die exclusively for mental health reasons,” Leonard reported.

“Only last week, a jaw-dropping story emerged of how, five years into an infuriating battle to obtain a stairlift for her home, Canadian army veteran and Paralympian Christine Gauthier was offered an extraordinary alternative,” he revealed.

A now-fired Canadian official evidently told her in 2019 that if her life was too difficult to handle, the government would help her end her life.

“I have a letter saying that if you’re so desperate, madam, we can offer you MAID, medical assistance in dying,” the retired paraplegic ex-army corporal testified in front of Canadian MPs.

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Gauthier took part in the 2016 Paralympics in Rio de Janeiro representing Canada. She also took part in the Invictus Games that year.

She is confined to a wheelchair with a musculoskeletal disorder that affects her legs, back, and hips. Despite her handicap, Gauthier is a gold medal-winning para-canoeist and has won a silver medal participating in Canada’s women’s ice sledge hockey team.

“She is very far from most people’s idea of a hopeless case and yet her government’s Department of Veterans Affairs didn’t hesitate to suggest that she might like to end her life if the battle to get a ramp was proving too much for her,” Leonard continued.

“Ms. Gauthier said she recently expressed her concerns about it in writing to Canadian prime minister Justin Trudeau. Mr. Trudeau described what happened to her as ‘absolutely unacceptable’ even as his government admitted that her case wasn’t unique,” he added.

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At least five cases of military veterans being offered assisted suicide have been referred to Canadian police.

“Veterans Affairs minister Lawrence MacAulay tried to blame a single female official, and yet even if that is the case she hardly dreamt up the appalling suggestion out of thin air but offered a fatal solution that experts say is becoming far too common in Canada,” Leonard asserted.

“Alan Nichols, for instance, was a 61-year-old British Columbian with a history of depression and other medical issues – though none of them life-threatening – who was hospitalized in 2019 over fears he might be suicidal,” he recounted.

“Although he asked his brother, Gary, to ‘bust him out’ as soon as possible, within a month of going into hospital he’d submitted a request to be euthanized. He listed only one health condition – hearing loss – as the reason but that was enough to satisfy his keepers and he was killed. ‘Alan was basically put to death,’ said his brother Gary,” Leonard stated.

He went on to list other instances showing that people were put to death, sometimes for no provable reason at all. They were part of an investigation by the Associated Press, bringing fresh controversy to Canada’s right-to-die policy which the author contends is “slipping dangerously out of control.”

Citing the doctor of death in the United States, Dr. Kervorkian, Leonard went on to highlight how America is going down the same dark and dangerous path of assisted suicide.

“Since that time, 10 states and the District of Columbia have elected to allow doctor-assisted suicide. They include California, Colorado, New Jersey, Hawaii, Maine, Oregon, Vermont, Washington, New Mexico and Montana,” he wrote. “Public opinion has also trended towards more acceptable of the practice.”

“In Oregon, patients no longer even need to be state residents, although they must still be 18 and have only six or fewer months left to live. They usually must make at least three requests, both oral and written, for doctor-assisted death,” Leonard wrote by way of example.

“In California, after advocates complained that some patients were too weak or disoriented to sign a final attestation – declaring their desire to die – Governor Gavin Newsom signed legislation eliminating that requirement,” he noted.

Vermont and New York are also pushing for expanded euthanasia measures.

“Dr. Trudo Lemmens, University of Toronto professor of health law and policy, said the Canadian system might create an ‘obligation to introduce [suicide] as a part of ‘mental health treatment,'” Leonard explained.

“‘Imagine that being applied in the context of mental health. You have a person suffering severe depression, seeks help from a therapist and is offered the solution of dying,’ he continued. How easy it would be, he said, to convince patients who weren’t in their right mind that suicide was a good option,” the author pointed out.

Canada is looking to expand assisted suicide by offering it to “mature” minors. That would be children under the age of 18 who meet the same requirements as adults.

Some disabled people are said to be asking for euthanasia because they can’t afford medical treatment.

Professor Tim Stainton, director of the Canadian Institute for Inclusion and Citizenship at the University of British Columbia, called Canada’s assisted suicide law “probably the biggest existential threat to disabled people since the Nazis’ program in Germany in the 1930s.”

Canada is now also allegedly approving euthanasia for diabetics and those who are homeless.

And in the end, much of it may come down to medical costs, as “A 2017 Canadian study suggested medically-assisted dying could reduce health care spending in the country by as much as $137 million a year.”

Leonard ends his well-written piece with one stark reality: Assisted suicide results in “the cheapening of human life.”

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