medical assistance in dying, commonly known as MAiD.It’s an unmistakable message from the government: if you want to end your life, we’ll help you.“If you call the number on the government website, they will provide doctors that will sign off for you,” says the 52-year-old resident of Windsor, Ont.“They can have me dead in 90 days.
That’s what I was told.”Cowie certainly meets the medical criteria.“I have severe, severe asthma. And that’s turned into COPD, and Guillain-Barré syndrome as well as cancer.
And I also just recently fractured my back,” she says.“I’m tired a lot. The pain is excruciating.”Enacted in 2016, Canada’s first MAiD legislation required that death be “reasonably foreseeable.” However, based on subsequent legal challenges, the legislation was ruled unconstitutional and the rules were changed.
Starting last year, anyone who has a “serious and incurable illness, disease or disability” that is irreversible with “enduring and intolerable” suffering became eligible.But critics say the government’s quick expansion of MAiD and insistence that it’s the compassionate thing to do misses an important factor.