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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Winnipeg – October 5, 2020 – The Council of Canadians with Disabilities (CCD), a national disability rights organization, is vehemently denouncing the Trudeau government’s re-introduction of Bill C-7, a bill which extends access to Medical Aid in Dying to people who are experiencing intolerable suffering as a result of illness or disability, but whose death is not reasonably foreseeable. The bill was first introduced in early February, before the COVID-19 pandemic hit Canada.
“The COVID-19 pandemic has clearly revealed the ableism that is rampant in Canada’s healthcare system, as well as in Canadian society as a whole.” says Dr. Heidi Janz, Chair of the CCD’s Ending-of-Life Ethics Committee. She explains that “Ableism can be defined as the discrimination and social prejudice against people with disabilities based on the belief that typical abilities are superior. Like racism and sexism, ableism classifies entire groups of people as ‘less than,’ and perpetuates harmful stereotypes, misconceptions, and generalizations about people with disabilities.”
“Over the past five months, we’ve seen not only the introduction of critical care triage protocols which identify the pre-existence of a disability as an exclusion criterion for critical care, in the event that rationing of resources, such as ventilators, becomes necessary due to overwhelming demand; we’ve also seen elderly and disabled people who fall ill being left to die in nursing homes and never sent for medical care in hospitals,” Janz explains. “At the same time, we’re hearing provinces like Alberta and Ontario threaten to severely cut—or even outright end—the income support programs that people with disabilities rely on to survive. All of this means that people with disabilities are more marginalized during these pandemic times than they have been at any other time in Canada’s history.”
“With such evidence of systemic discrimination against people with disabilities mounting daily, the Trudeau government’s decision to move forward with this bill without adding safeguards to prevent marginalized Canadians from being driven to seek assistance to die because they cannot get assistance to live is evidence of a head-in-the-sand mentality that endangers the lives of Canadians with disabilities,” Janz says.
The Council of Canadians with Disabilities is urgently calling on the Trudeau government to withdraw Bill C-7 and replace it with a new bill that strikes a more careful balance between autonomy rights and equality rights for people with disabilities. Such a Bill would need to follow the judicial directive in the Carter ruling, which called for “a carefully-designed system” that “imposes stringent limits” that are “scrupulously monitored and enforced.”
“The government seems committed to spending time, energy and resources to helping us die sooner. What we truly need are resources to live with dignity in the community. This means having income above the poverty line, access to community resources like home care and attendant services and access to quality palliative care — should the need arise,” said Tracy Odell, President of Citizens With Disabilities – Ontario and 2nd Vice-Chair of CCD.
“Canada should show its resolve to be a ‘kinder and gentler’ nation. We do this through active support of our human rights recognized by the United Nation Convention on the Rights of People with Disabilities; not by expediting people’s death — especially when our so-called ‘choice’ for an early death arises from fear of loneliness, neglect and shortage of help to live with dignity at home.”
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FOR FURTHER INFORMATION, CONTACT:
Dr. Heidi Janz
hjanz@ualberta.ca
Please forward all correspondence to the Head Office.
909-294 Portage Avenue
Winnipeg MB
R3C 0B9
Tel: 204-947-0303
Fax: 204-942-4625
TTY/ATS: 204-943-4757
Toll Free: 1-877-947-0303
E-mail: ccd@ccdonline.ca
Also:
Web: www.ccdonline.ca
Facebook: www.facebook.com/ccdonline
Twitter: www.twitter.com/ccdonline
Youtube: www.youtube.com/user/ccdonline
