Dear Minister McKenna,
I am a constituent of Ottawa Centre and the mother of a young man with severe cerebral palsy and multiple health challenges. My son enjoys an excellent ‘ordinary life’ with the support of his helpers, medical professionals, friends and family. As a person with chronic pain, he spends most of his time lying down in bed, a place of comfort from which he writes a hockey blog, Skypes friends, tweets opinions and conducts research into sports history.
The greatest worry in our family is not who will love our son after my husband and I die (we have a plan for that), but rather who will protect the integrity of the supports he needs in order to make his life liveable. The possibility of losing those supports and the legal basis on which to reinstate them is the reason why I am an advisor to The Vulnerable Persons Standard. I believe that any framework for MAiD that expands eligibility beyond those who are at the natural end of their lives will threaten my son and the supports he needs to live. There is simply no alternative safeguard or protocol that would in any way remedy or ameliorate the harm that removing requirement for nearing a natural death will cause.
My son’s essential supports are expensive (he is among those living in the community with the highest needs). There will be those who would draw negative assumptions about the quality of his life based on the severity of his disabilities. Those people have not talked to him. But the pressure to save community health dollars at the expense of the most vulnerable (especially those who are non-speaking), is to me, an obvious outcome of removing the MAiD requirement for nearing a natural death. Assuming that the goodwill of people will protect my son’s life is not good enough – he needs the law behind him.
Please consider the unintended consequences of rescinding the requirement of nearing a natural death for MAiD in Canada – my son’s life depends on it.
Thank you,
Donna Thomson
Author, The Four Walls of My Freedom (House of Anansi Press) and co-author, The Unexpected Journey of Caring (Rowman & Littlefield)
CHILD-BRIGHT SPOR – Steering and Citizen Engagement Committees
Co-instructor, Family Engagement in Research Certificate, McMaster University