Canadian doctor says housing issues justify assisted suicide

A Canadian doctor who has assisted hundreds of people in taking their own lives is arguing that something as simple as poor housing conditions should be a legitimate reason to seek "medical assistance in dying."

Key Takeaways:

• Abortionist and euthanasia practitioner Ellen Wiebe said last month that she thinks people should have the right to access assisted suicide and euthanasia due to housing issues.

• Her comments are in line with the money-saving euthanasia expansion efforts in Canada, in which the government understands it can save millions of dollars each year by killing people instead of providing them with treatments or social services.

• If a poor housing situation is a justifiable reason for assisted death, then any reason is justifiable.

The Details:

Dr. Ellen Wiebe is a Canadian doctor who specializes in abortion and euthanasia who claims "human rights has been a major focus of my life."

In an interview with the Daily Mail last month, she said, "In some situations, I will actually ask: 'If you could have better housing, if you could have better services, would you want to live longer?' And you know, some would say, 'yes.'"

“Does that mean that person should not have rights? No. They should still have the right to make this decision [to end their lives by euthanasia or assisted suicide]," she claimed.

The Backstory:

Wiebe was once blocked by a judge from euthanizing a woman who had bipolar disorder. She had allegedly not spoken to any of the woman's doctors or reviewed the woman's medical records.

In another story she likes to tell, she picked up a man from the airport who had already been denied assisted death. She brought him to her facility and killed him.

“And he flew all by himself to Vancouver,” she said. “I picked him up at the airport, […] brought him to my clinic, and [euthanised him]”.

Wiebe once admitted that she doesn’t regret killing any of her patients — a number topping 400.

Her comments about euthanasia for housing issues are not unexpected to anyone paying attention to the state of euthanasia and assisted suicide in Canada.

The Big Picture:

In 2022, a 54-year-old man in Ontario said he applied for Medical Aid in Dying (MAiD) due to his fears of homelessness after the home he was renting was put up for sale. Unable to work because of a signifcant back injury, he began to see MAiD as his option.

“I don’t want to die but I don’t want to be homeless more than I don’t want to die,” he said. “I know, in my present health condition, I wouldn’t survive it [homelessness] anyway. It wouldn’t be at all dignified waiting, so if that becomes my two options, it’s pretty much a no-brainer.”

Dr. Kerry Bowman, a bioethicist from the University of Toronto, told City News Everywhere that Canada’s lax euthanasia laws have led to more and more people with disabilities seeking MAiD.

“Cases like [his] are emerging with increasing frequency across the country. We were unbelievably naive as a nation to think that vulnerability, disability, poverty that we could parcel that off and it wasn’t going to be a problem. It’s a huge problem,” Bowman said.

A downward spiral

At its legalization in 2016, MAiD was for adults considered terminally ill with "reasonably foreseeable" deaths. It's never morally acceptable to end anyone's life prematurely, but since then, the rules surrounding assisted death in Canada have severely loosened.

By 2021, Medical Aid in Dying had expanded to include people whose deaths are "not reasonably foreseeable." This would include individuals with disabilities or chronic illness.

In March 2027, the nation is set to expand the rules even further to allow people with mental illnesses to become eligible for assisted death.

Commentary:

It isn't about people's "rights" as Wiebe claims. It's about money.

If poor housing is a reason to be euthanised, then what wouldn't be a reason? It's the same mentality behind abortion on demand through all nine months of pregnancy and the argument that any reason is a good enough reason to kill a preborn child.

If a person cites lack of services as a reason for wanting to die, the solution is not to kill them, it's to help them access the services they need to live their life.

But that's not how Weibe seems to think.

The Bottom Line:

In 2020, Canada's Parliamentary Budget Officer publicly released a report that its MAiD program has created a "net cost reduction" of $86.9 million per year for government run health care. The report also noted that expansion of the categories of persons eligible for MAiD would create an additional net savings of $62 million per year. 

In an article for The Spectator, author Yuan Yi Zhu, wrote, “Health care, in particular for those suffering from chronic conditions, is expensive; but assisted suicide only costs the taxpayer $2,327 per ‘case.’ And, of course, those who have to rely wholly on government-provided Medicare pose a far greater burden on the exchequer than those who have savings or private insurance…. There is already talk of allowing ‘mature minors’ access to euthanasia too—just think of the lifetime savings.”

It's cheaper for the government to help people kill themselves than to provide them with treatment. This is a grave injustice and a threat to human dignity.