Sarah Palin used them in 2009 to fight Obamacare reforms by scaring U.S. voters into thinking that groups of doctors would decide which patients would live and which would die. Back then, one in three healthcare dollars went to treat Americans 65 and older. Today it’s 37%. Still no death panels, nor are there in Canada.
But Alberta Premier Danielle Smith is pushing Bill 18, The Safeguards for Last Resort Termination of Life Act that will act much like Death Panels, except they will constrain Medical Assistance in Dying (MAiD) instead of encouraging it.
This week, the Globe and Mail’s Robyn Urback wrote why this is a terrible idea made worse by Smith invoking the “notwithstanding clause” which lets any province veto any Charter right or Supreme Court decision, such as the one in 2015 when the Court voted 9-0 to allow MAiD because not to allow it constituted cruel and unusual punishment.
Back then, you qualified for MAiD if you were enduring irremediable suffering and your death was foreseeable. Back then, as now, 27% of Canadians die of cancer and 15% from heart disease.
Many Canadians (and many American and British media) are alarmed to learn that this year for the first time, over 100,000 Canadians are projected to die via MAiD. Indeed, MAiD is up by 64% across the country between 2021 and 2024. But I look at these figures and ask a different question: why are they not higher?
I mean, 87,400 of us will die from cancer this year, and 56,000 from heart disease, for a total of 143,000. And yet the number of those people who chose to die using MAiD is only 11.3% of all Canadians who will die from cancer or heart disease. We all know someone, likely someone close to us, who has endured death by cancer or heart disease, and when it’s all over, we likely whispered: “Just don’t let me die that way.” And yet, clearly we do. My wife, who is a MAiD doctor, says this is because people have an inexhaustible will to live.
But Danielle Smith’s Notwithstanding fight isn’t about Track 1 MAiD, which is about irremediable suffering and foreseeable death. It’s about Track 2, the reasons for MAiD that are much more complex and contentious and where death isn’t reasonably foreseeable. These include mental illness being the sole underlying condition, or being under the age of 18, or having a chronic debilitating condition like cerebral palsy or post-polio disability.
Bill C-18 also requires that:
- A family member must witness the provision of MAiD.
- Doctors must not mention, let alone discuss MAiD with their patients, unless those patients mention it first.
- Hospitals can not only refuse MAiD on their premises, they must establish a 150-metre exclusion zone around the hospital where discussions and assessments for MAiD are forbidden.
- A patient’s natural death must now be not just foreseeable, but likely within one year.
- It disallows the use of Advance Requests. Today, no Canadian outside of Quebec qualifies for MAiD if they have Alzheimer’s because their death is not foreseeable. By the time it is, they likely won’t have the mental capacity to consent. Today, 750,000 Canadians are living with Alzheimer’s or other forms of dementia. In an effort to allow Alzheimer’s patients a less tortured death, Ottawa is proposing the use of Advance Requests. Alberta will disallow this.
- Clinics and long-term care homes cannot publicly display information on MAiD.
Of course, while Bill C-18 is about MAiD, it’s really about much more: like sticking it to Ottawa, and appealing to your base, and saying we protect families and stand up for their rights against Big Government.
It’s not that MAiD is perfect by any means. Track 1 saw Veterans being “offered death instead of counselling, where a woman suffering with obesity was accepted for MAiD and where a woman with dementia was helped to die after a family member twice referred her for MAiD.”
And Track 2 is nowhere as clear-cut around who qualifies, thus creating the potential for more abuse, not less.
But Robyn Urback’s solution is not to fight the Notwithstanding Clause or the many new strictures of Bill C-18 – especially the 150-metres cordon sanitaire for even breathing the word “MAiD”.
She offers a surprising solution: “The risk for everyone is that MAiD becomes so out of control, so unchecked, that someone comes along and scraps the entire thing, notwithstanding the Supreme Court’s decision in 2015. That’s why restoring some sanity to MAiD laws in Canada is so important now. And proponents of MAiD for the terminally ill should be the loudest supporters.”
Oh, and there’s one more provision in Bill C-18 I haven’t mentioned. That is the provincial government will be the single source of referral for MAiD. Back in 2016 provinces like Alberta and Manitoba implemented this system because they had large geographies and few MAiD doctors.
Back then, Alberta’s Premier was Rachel Notley. Today, if you’re a doctor, a nurse practitioner, a patient, a family member or even a friend, the request goes through the province’s care coordinators.
But what if a less benign Premier were to say: “Let’s downsize or defund this provincial agency.”
Then there would be no MAiD at all, no Track 1 and no Track 2.
Once you accept that logic for MAiD, the template is portable: reproductive health, gender-affirming care, even controversial drugs become candidates for the same legislative cone of silence.
The most chilling part of Alberta’s bill is not the 12‑month threshold, or the compliance paperwork, or even the professional penalties. It is the idea that, in the most intimate conversation many of us will ever have – the one about how and when we die – the loudest voice in the room will not be our loved ones, or our doctor, or even ourselves, but a legislature that insists on standing 150 metres away and still running the show.
If Alberta wants to narrow MAiD, it should make its case in open court, not behind the blast wall of the Notwithstanding clause and the fiction that information itself is a form of harm. Whatever your view on assisted dying, the right to an honest, unhurried, fully informed conversation with your doctor should not depend on whether you are standing inside, or just outside, an invisible line on the pavement.
Meanwhile…
1. Gillian Anderson…on why women over 50 are disappearing.
Plus famous restaurants by women, including Yawékon near Brantford. And meet the feminist resistance fighter who created the modern kitchen.
2. The Ryanair of railways. Dutch startup GoVolta is offering cheap train tickets to Hamburg and Berlin for €19 with plans to reach Paris next year. Plus…when Instagram meets Overtourism meets Drones.…Plus air travel will more than double by 2050…plus how the Iran conflict is costing tourism $600 million a day…and how Mt. Everest is limiting overtourism.
And are points programs ruining luxury hotels? Finally, a New Yorker documentary on thebad news around taking the perfect photo.
3. Tech tips that aren’t AI. Remember the Internet? It was created in 1983. Yet there are still new tips to make it (and you) operate better. From strengthening your hippocampus, to the Baader-Meinhof Phenomenon,to taking free courses at MIT.
Back to AI…will it cure all disease or is that just AI slop?
4. The cost of citizenship. Forget becoming an Italian citizen (and hence an EU citizen) just because your great-grandfather came from Italy. A new Italian court ruling has ended unlimited generational citizenship. On the other hand, the price of American citizenship is falling in line with its value. In mid-April, the Trump administration will lower the fee for formally renouncing your American citizenship from $2,350 to $450. It affects mostly people who live abroad and don’t want to pay U.S. taxes or embrace its values.
5. Should opera singers sell used cars? This one does. Speaking of opera singers, the Canadian phenom Emily D’Angelo who was chosen by Glenn Gould Prize-winner Elton John to receive the Glenn Gould Protégé Prize (along with $25,000), will sing at the gala honouring Sir Elton in Toronto on May 9.
Plus, what’s the AGO’s Mona Lisa? And who’s the real Banksy? Plus, a portrait of “Lou D” who’s opening the Kodak vault after 25 years in the dark.
As for all the arts, here are Rosie Millard’s 10 tips to fill every concert hall.
6. Accentuate the positive. Is it true your accent could get you fired? Speaking of fired, what if Prince Andrew had become king? And it looks like AI has already come for the sommeliers.
7. Things are looking up. Especially if you’re Finnish. You live in the world’s happiest country for the 9th year in a row. The U.S. placed 23rd and Canada 25th. That’s okay because the world is getting happier: Since 2006-2010, 79 countries have shown significant gains in happiness, while 41 show significant losses.
Speaking of happiness, does culture still follow capital? And guess who’s drowning in debt– since 1882?
8. Some conspiracies aren’t theories. Like how ICE agents turned up everywhere(from the unimpeachable Bellingcat). Plus why some bettors are issuing death threats.Plus, the perils of perpetual politics. And the deadliest types of extreme weather. “A Tsunami of Transnational Repression” is set to hit Canada, Ron Deibert, head of The Citizen Lab, told a House of Commons committee this week. And this anti-Trumper isn’t going to “No Kings” this weekend.
9. Round they go. How to watch thousands of satellites circle the earth. And how to watch our same Home Planet 750 million years ago. Plus not a good reason to die, nor a good way to, either. Plus, how organizations lose their minds.
10. The BS at the BSO. The Boston Symphony Orchestra is one of the world’s best. Last week, they announced they were ending their contract with their music director, Andris Nelsons. One problem: everyone loves him. Even competing orchestras. Another? They forgot to tell the musicians. Given this note to a casual enquirer, maybe the BSO Board are the ones who need to go in a different direction.
11. What I’m watching: The Madison (on Prime), Taylor Sheridan’s latest love story, one of 10 of his series streaming in big sky country. Michelle Pfeiffer and Kurt Russellprovide the sparks, but this is more a love-and-loss story. As my mother used to say, it’s a weeper.