On June 20, the British House of Commons delivered another devastating blow to respect for the sanctity of human life, by adopting a bill to legalize euthanasia on a vote of 314 to 291. However, it is noteworthy that, in comparison to Canada’s Medical Assistance in Dying legislation, this British bill is, for now, far more restrictive and contains much more stringent safeguards, yet it was strenuously opposed not only by a solid majority of Conservative MPs, but also by 42 per cent of the Labour Party MPs who voted, including several cabinet ministers.
In sorry contrast, the great majority of Liberals and New Democrats in the Parliament of Canada are blithely content with Canada’s much worse MAiD legislation. Whereas the law in Canada makes the death-dealing procedure available to mentally competent adults who are enduring physical or psychological suffering “that is intolerable to them and that cannot be relieved under conditions that they consider acceptable,” the British bill restricts MAiD to terminally ill adults whose death “can reasonably be expected within six months.”
Moreover, as originally introduced by backbench Labour Party MP Kim Leadbeater, the British bill also provides that every MAiD request must be approved by two physicians and a judge on Britain’s High Court of Justice, which hears appeals in criminal cases. However, during committee hearings, several MPs insisted that requiring just two physicians and a High Court judge to approve every MAID request was not sufficient, so the committee adopted an amendment proposed by Leadbeater that requires every proposed MAiD death to be approved by a review panel consisting of a psychiatrist and a registered social worker as well as a King’s Counsel or an active or retired senior member of the judiciary.
In a statement on May 13, the Royal College of Psychiatrists deemed that even this new safeguard is insufficient. “There are not enough consultant psychiatrists to do what the Bill asks,” the College explained. It also noted that the bill provides no guidance on how clinicians are supposed to “protect and empower people with terminal illness to decide whether or not to end their own life, while at the same time detain those who are at risk of suicide so that they can be urgently treated.”
In Canada, there is no provision for any review committee to approve a MAiD request. To qualify for MAiD, all a terminally ill patient requires is the consent in writing of just two physicians or nurse practitioners, neither of whom may have any expertise in diagnosing suicidal depression.
Canada’s MAiD regulations are well designed for speed. In a recent report, the Ontario MAiD Death Review Committee, an entity established by the Office of the Chief Coroner to review all MAiD deaths in the province after the fact, focused on 219 euthanasia killings in Ontario during 2023 that occurred on the day or the day after the patient had requested MAiD.
As one example, the committee cited the appalling case of Mrs. B, a frail woman in her 80s who saw three MAiD practitioners in just two days. The first practitioner ruled her ineligible for MAiD because she had expressed religious objections to committing suicide. Her husband, who was experiencing burnout fatigue, then promptly arranged for her to be seen by two other MAiD practitioners on the next day.
With her husband present and doing most of the talking, these two purported health-care providers promptly approved Mrs. B for MAiD and one of them killed her later that evening.
Altogether, Canada’s MAID practitioners have deliberately killed more than 60,000 vulnerable patients since 2016. Worse, this death toll is rising exponentially. In 2023, it reached a grim total of 15,343, up 15.8 per cent from the year before.
Leadbeater has promised that her bill could not possibly lead to euthanasia on such a catastrophic scale in Britain. All such assurances are worthless. As Canada’s tragic experience confirms, licensing physicians to kill patients at the beginning or the end of life under “extreme” circumstances soon results in the mass slaughter of vulnerable human beings.
It is a profound pity that Leadbeater’s bill was not defeated. That would have settled the matter at least until Parliament took up the issue again.
Not so in Canada. Our House of Commons rejected a MAiD bill in 2005, again in 2008, and once more in 2010, only to have the Supreme Court of Canada declare in Carter v. Canada, 2015, that the right to life, liberty and security of the person guaranteed in the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms obligates Parliament to enact a MAiD law.
Such a travesty of law and justice could not occur in the United Kingdom: Unlike Canada, the UK is still a genuine democracy in which the courts respect the legislative authority of Parliament to determine fundamental questions of public policy.
