Canada Offers Assisted Suicide to Disabled Paralympian, Veteran

Alternate title: You Were Right Again, Mom.

More on that in a second; first, let me confirm, YES, this is actually something that HAPPENED on PURPOSE and IN EARNEST.

Christine Gauthier, who served as a corporal in the Canadian military and competed in the 2016 Paralympics, was having issues getting a wheelchair lift in her home. Like, FIVE YEARS’ worth of issues, because Canada. But when she got in touch with someone to try to address the issue, she instead got a friendly, “Would you like us to kill yourself??”

“I have a letter saying that if you’re so desperate, madam, we can offer you MAID, medical assistance in dying,” Gauthier said in a hearing before the House of Commons veterans affairs committee.

HOLYYYYYY.

I’m not saying America is perfect– our support (or rather, lack thereof) for veterans is certainly nothing to brag about– but at least we don’t routinely OFFER TO HELP THEM COMMIT SUICIDE. And yes, I mean “routine”– the service agent who sent Gauthier this letter (and who has been fired) reportedly made the same offer to at least four others.

Prime Minister Castreau Trudeau said in a statement,

“We are following up with investigations and we are changing protocols to ensure what should seem obvious to all of us: that it is not the place of Veterans Affairs Canada, who are supposed to be there to support those people who stepped up to serve their country, to offer them medical assistance in dying.”

Are you picking up the same thing in that comment that I did? That thing about “changing protocols”? Yeah. . . That’s not a good look. I suspect the play is to pretend this was a rogue agent acting outside the parameters of Veterans Affairs procedures. I also suspect that’s not an accurate picture of what happened. I’m not saying I think Trudeau wants “inconvenient” people to die, I’m just saying I wouldn’t be surprised to find out it was policy to gently push individuals who may require more than average from the overburdened national healthcare system to decide to remove themselves from the pool of citizens requiring medical care, and this particular agent lacked the subtlety expected of those in the role.

Which brings me to my alternate title. When I first voiced my general support for assisted suicide in the case of terminally ill and mentally sound individuals, my mom said she understood my point but thought it was the peak of a slippery slope. I thought that was a little silly: how can letting someone, say, with advanced cancer leave the world on their own terms slip into something unsavory?

THIS. THIS IS HOW.

THANK YOU, TRUDEAU’S CANADA, FOR ILLUSTRATING THAT SO CLEARLY.

Since we’re already in Canada, allow me to quote the great Shoresy in my parting comments to our neighbor’s dictator Prime Minister:

Mr. Trudeau, respectfully, give yer balls a tug.