February 2025 will be ten years after the Supreme Court of Canada unanimously ruled that the right to life included the right to state-assisted suicide, euphemistically called “Medical Assistance in Dying” (MAiD). Parliament, led by the current Liberal government, encased it in law in 2016. What caused the Supreme Court to lean towards legallizing euthanasia? It rejected arguments that Canadians would push the vulnerable to consider assisted suicide, stating that we would be more sensible than Belgium’s disastrous experiment in euthanasia where children and people with psychiatric disorders were dying at the hands of doctors. It also stated that Canada would never recommend those who are diagnosed with terminal illnesses the possibility of assisted suicide early in the treatment regime. The court said, “We have a very different medico-legal culture” and made euthanasia legal on the basis of betting on our differences. How have we done in 10 years? Just 5 short years into the legalization of assisted suicide, unnoticed in the midst of a pandemic, Canada’s euthanasia regime was expanded to cover those with chronic conditions whose deaths were not imminent. At the same time, Parliament legalized euthanasia for mental illness alone to come into force in 2023 (it has since been delayed till 2027). Our commitment to mental health and suicide prevention has now taken a back seat. In addition, MAiD has been offered freely to people whose treatment for cancer was delayed and another to a disabled woman who chose MAiD because she could not secure adequate housing. Recently, a paraolympian was offered MAiD by a government employee when she asked for a wheelchair ramp. In 2023, almost one death out of 20 in Canada was due to MAiD. In Quebec, where MAiD is recommended enthusiastically even at the first diagnosis of a serious illness, the percentage of MAiD deaths is the highest in the world. In a five year period, Ontario’s chief coroner’s office recorded 428 cases of non-compliance with Canadian law by MAiD providers. Most cases led to nothing more than an email to the provider; only four cases were referred to professional regulators; not a single law-breaker was referred to the police. It seems that the assumptions of the Supreme Court in 2015 did not stand the test of time. We are currently in a situation more disastrous than that of Belgium’s.
As I think on these things, I am led to Scripture where God encases the sanctity of life in the Ten Commandments: “Thou shalt not kill.” Though written in an age where medical science could not cure what we today would consider non life-threatening illness, the Old Testament set up a system of healing through the priests, the isolation of the contagious, and the care for those who are ill. When Jesus entered into the scene of Planet Earth, the most common miracle He performed to assert His divine nature was to heal. Crowds would gather where He was, and the Bible says, “He healed them all” (Matthew 4:24; 8:16; 12:15; Mark 3:10; Luke 8:27). I think it would be good for us to be saddened by the culture of death that has been allowed into Canadian society by an act of law. But the most effective response of the believer in Christ is to speak about the life that is in Jesus Christ. People who live lives without the meaningfulness of the abundant life more easily choose death when the terror of life becomes overwhelming. The fact is that Jesus came to give us life, and life indeed “more abundantly” (John 10:10). Such life springs out of the believer like an eternal spring because its source and power is from God. To the sorrowing, He is our Great Comforter; to the sick, He is our Eternal Healer; to the wandering, He will never leave us or forsake us. I wonder if there would be a time when Canada would reverse the laws of MAiD laid down ten years ago, but I think our task is more urgent – to share with a sad and dying world that Jesus is the Way, the Truth and the Life. Now, that is worth living for.
Just Church
At Just Church, our message is the life-giving gospel in Jesus Christ to everyone who believes. “The vision of Just Church is to establish a church in just the way Christ called the church to be – true to His Word, loving Him, loving one another, and loving the lost.”
