Bill C-7

 

The below came up in my Facebook memories for this day from last year. It is still appropriate as bill C-7 is back in parliament. Among things I forgot to mention last year, C-7 makes no provision for conscience protection for doctors. Doctors who oppose euthanasia are apparently not wanted, which means that one day we will only have doctors who are comfortable in administering death to (aka killing) their patients.

 

"I've done something I normally avoid doing: I wrote to my member of parliament. This was in regards to bill C-7. It expands the bill legalizing assisted suicide that was passed in 2016. 

 

(Member of Parliament)

 

When assisted suicide was legalized in 2016, it was indicated at that time that there would be no no new legislation regarding assisted suicide until a thorough five year review of the impact of assisted suicide on Canadian society had been made. Where is this review? 

 

When assisted suicide was first introduced, many Canadians voiced a concern that access to assisted suicide would be expanded, and the criteria would be relaxed. These concerns were dismissed as slippery slope arguments, the safeguards were to be in place pending the aforementioned review, and yet here we are. 

 

Is there any dedication on your government's part of providing more support for palliative care? Support for the disabled? If there is to be a choice to be made, should it not be a real choice in which managed and assisted living is a real option? Currently, very few Canadians have that real option, and your government appears to only be offering death to those who do not.

 

End letter.

 

Medical costs are one of the greatest expenditures in the government. The cost of medical expenses have skyrocketed since the healthcare system was first created back in Mike Pearson's time. We now have far more treatment options, more and more effective medicines, tests, treatments, probes, etc etc. We are healthier and we live longer, and it costs a fortune. Just letting people die, however, is cheap, and I do not trust any government, pencil pusher, bureaucrat or bean counter with that kind of power at hand to help them balance the bottom line.

 

Furthermore, they are expanding the rights to include the 'disabled', and they are discussing who can make the decision for them if they cannot. I have some skin in that game. My son is disabled. You may think nothing will happen to him, yet, and I agree. Not yet. But this government has backed away from its promise to wait five years and review. This new bill has proven those who argued back in 2016 that this was a slippery slope were right- or more accurately, they have proven them to have been too optimistic in their assessment that this was merely a slippery slope. 

 

Our society is breaking down. The family is breaking down, and our government is all too willing to step into the gaps we are creating, ready to offer its 'help'. 

 

I don't trust governments, any of them, and in some my distrust is greater than others. I have been shafted by all of them, sooner or later, and very often in the form of 'help' that they offered for my own good. If there is one point that has been hammered home with tedious and terrifying regularity in the history of the world from the French Revolution forward, it is that there is little in this world that is more dangerous than a man who believes he knows what is best for another man. 

 

Our various governments efforts to 'help' us for our own good were benign enough when they were confined to spending money ineffectively or their half hearted attempts at indoctrination into the tenets of whatever party held the reins at any moment, but now... now they can help us out with death as a tool. If you think they won't go there, just remember that we were promised that there would be no bill for at least another year, and then only pending a 'thorough' review."

 

As a footnote, the member of parliament for my riding never responded to or acknowledged my letter.