MAID For Mental Illness Reasons Alone: Parliamentary Committee Recommends Indefinite Exclusion To The Canadian Government.

Let's start with the ignorant headline writers: MAID is not Euthanasia. Under the former, it's the individual who decides to access MAID. In the latter case, it's a third party who imposes the decision on a non-consenting human being. Got it?

I'm kind of all over the place on this issue when it comes to mental illness: I get the point that with proper therapy and drugs, the odds likely favour at least a temporary breakthrough in quality of life. So I can understand why some doctors and psychiatrists want to use all the silver bullets first. Same thing with suicidal ideation. Suicidal ideation does not now nor will it ever have a successful treatment rate of one hundred percent. I know of people who either got the right therapeutic intervention and psychotropic recipe on the first try, others on subsequent tries, and a few who didn't and who ended up taking their lives. But make no mistake that this view and desire to act is in and of itself positive discrimination, a violation of Section 7 of the Charter and the right to individual autonomy. In decisions like Carter, we've come a long way from Rodriguez. This reality explains why some political parties don't want to see this issue come up before the SCOC.

Where I start to fade in support of this approach is regarding the circle of life. One of the cruelties of life is that inevitably, our social footprint shrinks thanks to death. Most people can adapt and go on, but some, at a given juncture, have no desire to do so. Some people are literally alone in this world or have few solid nurturing relationships or friendships. Is the state really supposed to tell these people that they have to stick it out until their physical demise? I don't see that as a just response. Not at all. At some prescribed period, even a person with a mental condition should be able to be the arbiter of their own life, but how do you legally and morally square that circle?

Moving on now to those who suffer from severe cognitive impairment. We're talking one or several forms of dementia. In my mother's case, her last two years consisted of a bed and a chair. Should she really have had to end her days in such a state? I think not.

That's where advanced medical treatment directives should come in: a person suffering from no mental or cognitive illness, along with those who suffer from manageable mental issues or mild cognitive impairment, should be able to draft and sign such directives. There should come a point where a law drafted by Parliament ought to allow an individual to proceed in good faith, following what they and their doctors previously determined on the balance of probabilities as more than likely unsuccessful psychiatric treatment. 

As a person who previously suffered from suicidal ideation and attempted to take his own life in 2013, that's where I'm at. All I ask of each of our Parliamentarians is to try to put themselves in the shoes of those who are suffering unbearable mental anguish and cruelty. Surely, we owe them at least that much!