It was an abhorrent encounter with a nurse at a remote Alberta hospital that convinced Heather Hancock that Canada’s euthanasia system was breaking down.
Hancock suffered from cerebral palsy since childhood and was accustomed to bullying from her school days, but the treatment she received at Medicine Hat Regional Hospital was something different.
A nurse was helping her to go to the bathroom at night, during a long period of care for muscle spasms in 2019, when the caregiver crossed a line into the unthinkable.
“You should do the right thing and consider MAiD,” the nurse said, referring to the country’s Medical Assistance in Dying program.
“If I were you, I’d accept it in a heartbeat. You’re not living, you’re existing.”
Heather Hancock, 56, says medical teams see her as a waste of money spent on healthcare today
A nurse at Medicine Hat Regional Hospital in Alberta told him he was “selfish” for using hospital resources.
Hancock, now 56, says she was “stunned” but stood her ground, telling the nurse her life had value, even if she spent four-fifths of it in a wheelchair.
“You have no right to pressure me into MAiD,” she recalls telling her mocking caregiver.
She later complained about the nurse, who was removed from her care team, but did not file an official complaint.
Health Alberta said the nurse’s comments were “totally unacceptable.”
For Hancock, it was the most egregious occasion, but not the only one, in which his supposed caregivers advised him to end his ailment with a lethal injection.
On three separate occasions, medical staff recommended MAiD to her, she says, all after Canada launched its euthanasia program in 2016.
That system has expanded rapidly.
Last year, doctors helped 15,280 suffering people end their lives prematurely, according to estimates obtained by DailyMail.com, a 15 per cent increase from 2022.
Some 60,000 people have died from MAiD since the program was launched, accounting for 4.6 percent of all deaths.
Physician-assisted suicides help recipients escape the misery of cancer, heart disease and other terminal illnesses, but for Hancock and others with disabilities, their availability has changed how caregivers view them.
“They just see me as a burden on the medical system and that the money I spend on my health care could be spent on a healthy person,” she says.
Hancock was born in Alberta in 1968 and lived, studied and worked as a hospital employee for many years in British Columbia.
Her worsening muscle condition forced her to stop working more than a decade ago.
Americans should look to Canada before opening Pandora’s box of assisted dying, warns Heather Hancock
Euthanasia deaths rose by more than 15 percent between 2022 and 2023, our projection shows
Tracy Polewczuk, who suffers from spina bifida, says nurses treat her like a “bag of meat”
She currently receives disability benefits and lives in an assisted living facility in Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan, writing and campaigning against assisted suicide in Canada and the United States.
Canada’s system is far more advanced than that in the United States, where beneficiaries in 10 states and Washington can request a cocktail of drugs that they ingest themselves, usually at home.
About a dozen US states have debated bills to legalize the procedures this year.
The legislation in Delaware passed both chambers, leaving Gov. John Carney with the final decision on whether to sign it into law.
“Look at what’s happening in this country,” Hancock said in a warning to Americans.
“It’s a Pandora’s box. Once the lid is opened, there is no control. All restrictions disappear very quickly and freedoms are undermined.”
Hancock is not alone: disability rights groups in both countries say MAiD leaves disabled people even more vulnerable.
Another Canadian, Tracy Polewczuk, said this month that she is experiencing similar problems in Quebec.
Polewczuk has spina bifida, a birth defect that can cause weak bones, and laments the worsening of the daily home care visits she receives in Pointe-Claire, Montreal.
“The pain is horrible. We all agree. It’s terrible. I’m in pain 24/7. It never stops. I can survive that,” she told CTV News.
“I can’t survive being treated like a sack of meat.”
Polewczuk says that on two separate occasions and without being asked, members of her care team told her she was eligible for MAiD.
“It feels like we’re being pushed into the MAiD program instead of being given help to live,” Polewczuk said.
Nearly two-thirds of assisted suicide recipients in Canada have cancer
Under the Liberal government of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, Canada has repeatedly eased access to euthanasia.
More than 99.9 per cent of assisted suicides in Canada are carried out by a physician.
“I want to survive. I want to thrive. I want my life back. I want the opposite of what they’re trying to get us to do.”
MAiD devices are available in all Canadian hospitals to offer the elderly and infirm the option of physician-assisted death.
But nurses are not supposed to harass disabled people about the terminal option, as was the case with Polewczuk and Hancock.
“We are sorry and saddened to hear about Heather’s experience,” Health Alberta spokesperson Andrea Smith told DailyMail.com.
“There are no circumstances in Alberta where a person should be forced to undergo MAiD for any reason, let alone for having a disability. What happened here is totally unacceptable.”
Canada’s path to authorizing euthanasia began in 2015, when its highest court declared that outlawing assisted suicide deprived people of their dignity and autonomy. It gave national leaders a year to draft the legislation.
The resulting 2016 law legalised both euthanasia and assisted suicide for people over the age of 18, provided they met certain conditions.
They had to have a serious and advanced condition, illness or disability that was causing them suffering and their death was imminent.
The law was later amended to allow people who are not terminally ill to choose death, significantly expanding the pool of eligible people.
Critics say the change removed a key protection meant to protect people who potentially have decades to live.
Today, any adult with a serious illness, disease or disability can seek help in dying.
In February, officials delayed plans to expand access to MAiD to people with mental illness, pushing the decision back to 2027.
Efforts are also being made to make euthanasia available to “mature minors.”
Euthanasia is legal in seven countries (Belgium, Canada, Colombia, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, New Zealand and Spain), as well as several states in Australia.
Other jurisdictions, including a growing number of U.S. states, allow physician-assisted suicide, in which patients take the drug themselves, usually by crushing and drinking a lethal dose of pills prescribed by a doctor.
In Canada, both options are known as MAiD, although more than 99.9 percent of these procedures are performed by a physician. The number of deaths from MAiD in Canada has been steadily increasing by about a third each year.
