License to Kill

For most Canadians, even as little as 10 years ago, this would seem like a scene from some dystopian Hollywood production. You know the type—one depicting a fictional futuristic civilization where people have been dehumanized to the point where heartless governmental powers dispassionately dictate life and death. Well, all I can say is—welcome to Canada in 2022.

Canada’s MAid

Meet Dr. Mauril Gaudreault (head of the Quebec College of Physicians). He is at the forefront of Canada’s medical assistance in dying (or MAiD) program, a euthanasia platform that is being continuously expanded to target and include more and more of our population.

Case in point: according to the Government of Canada website’s Third annual report on Medical Assistance in Dying in Canada 2021, assisted suicide was the cause of death for approximately 1 out of 30 cases, and that number will grow.

In 2021, there were 10,064 MAID provisions reported in Canada, accounting for 3.3% of all deaths in Canada.

The number of cases of MAID in 2021 represents a growth rate of 32.4% over 2020. All provinces continue to experience a steady year over year growth.1

Expanding the Program

Many Canadians have no idea this insidious program has been operating for years now, gathering momentum to the point where many of today’s healthcare experts feel “assisted death” should become a normalized form of healthcare, and some (like Gaudreault) think it should be considered a standard medical practice. And they are, in fact, actualizing it!

Addressing a federal Parliamentary Committee recently, Gaudreault said the following to the Committee of MPs and Senators attending.

Let’s reset the clock, please. Medical assistance in dying is a form of care. It’s a medical procedure that may be appropriate in certain circumstances. It is not a matter of politics, morality, or religion, but rather a medical matter. Medical assistance in dying is governed by the Criminal Code, guided by court decisions and has been the focus of ethical and deontological discussion for more than two decades. It has been accepted. Society has evolved.2

If by saying, “society has evolved,” he means it’s drifting further away from the Christian ethos on which Canada was originally established, then he is quite correct.

The primary issue here is the sanctity of life, and just like with the abortion issue where “pro-choice” (i.e., we want to be able to choose to kill our children) advocates began arguing from the worst-case scenarios (such as pregnancies caused by assault or that may cause danger to the mother’s health), we have all seen that once it was established under specific circumstances, it quickly became normalized for any reason whatsoever.

Who’s Eligible for Termination?

Similarly, euthanasia is now not just being considered an option for a very limited amount of people “in agonizing pain that have no reasonable hope for survival,” it’s now being pushed for sick and deformed babies under one year of age (infanticide); disabled, depressed, and/or mentally ill adults; and even for so-called mature minors, ages 14 and up.

And here we see the horrifying shift from the argument that people should be able to make their own life decisions, to where other people get to make decisions for them as to whether they are eliminated from society! Infants, children, and people who are crippled and mentally ill are now being categorized as a subset of society where someone else could suggest and determine whether they live or die. That includes people with potentially decades of life ahead of them.

Yes, This Is Really Happening

Some will still find what I’m saying hard to believe, perhaps thinking, “That could never happen in a civilized society,” trusting that there are surely guidelines. But Christians especially should recognize that, unlike our great Physician, Jesus, who provides the foundation for medical ethics, the unregenerate heart is prone to great evil. Jeremiah 17:9 reminds us, “The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately sick; who can understand it?”

What in God’s Word or an examination of history would convince Christians that a secular, anti-Christian government would “want the best” for its citizenry according to God’s standards?

According to a recent CBC news article, the national non-profit Dying With Dignity Canada “believes everyone should have both the right to live and the right to choose the way in which they will end their life in the face of extreme pain.” The article quotes an email from them, stating,

There are strenuous criteria and safeguards for all MAID assessments and approvals. . . . MAID can be requested, and consented to, only by an individual. No one should be coerced to have MAID by another individual.

However, it was reported within the same article that Canadian military veterans (some needing help with PTSD) have in fact, been counseled to commit suicide by Veteran’s Affairs workers!3

“It’s just horrifying,” said Scott Maxwell, executive director of Wounded Warriors Canada. . . . It’s hard to comprehend how medical assistance in dying, or MAID, would have been suggested in a conversation between an employee of Veterans Affairs Canada (VAC) and a veteran in need of help.

However, once a society begins to accept the idea that certain groups of “infirm” people should perhaps simply be eliminated, accountability can indeed go out the window—especially in cases where there is no one immediate to the situation to advocate for that person. Case in point is the truly horrifying (to quote Maxwell) experience of 61-year-old Canadian Alan Nichols.

A heartbreaking 2022 Global News article laid out the disturbing facts of this case.

Alan Nichols had a history of depression and other medical issues, but none were life-threatening. When the 61-year-old Canadian was hospitalized in June 2019 over fears he might be suicidal, he asked his brother to “bust him out” as soon as possible.

Within a month, Nichols submitted a request to be euthanized and he was killed, despite concerns raised by his family and a nurse practitioner.

His application for euthanasia listed only one health condition as the reason for his request to die: hearing loss.4

Let that sink in for a moment. This man went to a hospital because he was depressed and possibly suicidal. He needed help from medical professionals, and what was their solution? His termination.

The report went on to say,

Nichols’ family reported the case to police and health authorities, arguing that he lacked the capacity to understand the process and was not suffering unbearably _ among the requirements for euthanasia. They say he was not taking needed medication, wasn’t using the cochlear implant that helped him hear, and that hospital staffers improperly helped him request euthanasia.

“Alan was basically put to death,” his brother Gary Nichols said.

Philosophy of Death

The fact is, Canada arguably has the most permissive euthanasia rules in the world. And the lack of public awareness and any real safeguards are prompting and emboldening doctors and health workers in support of this barbaric mindset to suggest and promote this “health care” procedure to those who may have never even considered it.

Think of how devastating the mere suggestion of killing themselves may be to someone suffering from depression or suicidal thoughts. How devaluing to someone struggling with self-worth would that be? This is the same thing teachers declare needs to stop in schools, where young people bully, demean, and abuse others by saying, “Why don’t you go kill yourself?”

Why would the medical profession that once prided itself on the concept of “do no harm” be so comfortable with coercing people to agree to doing the greatest harm possible to themselves? It’s truly sickening.

How Do We View Ourselves?

Suicide rates have been increasing for a while now—especially among younger demographics. And it’s not hard to correlate that fact with a society that teaches young minds that ultimately, there can be no true meaning to their lives so they have no real inherent value.

Why? Because the story of evolution is taught as their origin, which means they are simply an accident—the result of random chance processes—not an image bearer of the God who created them and therefore precious in his eyes.

The conclusion that God doesn’t exist because of acceptance of evolution was summed up well in the 2004 Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) series called Testing God. The episode “Killing the Creator” states,

But why have we turned out the way we are? Once we believed we were unique, blessed with a soul and lovingly created by God in His image. Today, evolution says we are just a product of Natural Selection, the descendants of primitive bacteria, not the children of God.5

This atheistic mindset has led millions down a dark road, because brought to its logical conclusion, it changes people’s understanding of ethics and morality as well. Obviously, the solution to an overabundance of unneeded bacteria is to wipe it out.

And to further my point, another ABC program discussing the topic of depression highlighted the connection between naturalistic belief and suicide quite pointedly.6

In it, a young man named Gerard spoke of having contemplated suicide several times and concluded,

I’m just a bit concerned by the tendency of the medical profession and society in general to want to put a label on us as depressive people and therefore that there’s something wrong with us. I think that some people may have an inability to cope, and maybe this might sound a bit extreme, but that might be Darwinian theory, the Darwin theory of survival of the fittest.

Maybe some of us aren’t meant to survive, maybe some of us are meant to kill ourselves because the only people that really suffer are the ones left behind, but the person who kills themself may in fact be liberated from this body.7

It is indeed a sad thing to realize that some young people have bought into the idea they are worthless—a waste of resources.

In stark contrast to Jesus, a friend of sinners and the great Physician revealed in God’s Word, the story of evolution with its built-in atheistic, naturalistic presuppositions is of no help to those suffering with mental health issues. And as The Globe and Mail recently reported, “On March 17, assisted dying will become legal for Canadians with a mental disorder as their sole condition.”8

Holding Them Accountable

Perhaps the most insidious part of it all is the increasing lack of disclosure (which diminishes accountability for those administering these death sentences) being built into our laws. A perfect example comes from a draft policy by Ontario’s College of Physicians and Surgeons, directing doctors who commit assisted suicide not to document it as the cause of death on the certificate, but rather to claim an underlying disease killed the patient.

When completing the medical certificate of death, physicians:

a. must list the illness, disease, or disability leading to the request for MAID as the cause of death; and

b. must not make any reference to MAID or the medications administered on the certificate.9

Think that through. Why would such a thing even be proposed? With no record of the euthanasia event required, what would prevent a twisted health care professional with an angel of death complex from simply euthanizing patients they deem unworthy of life? Such policies seem all too familiar to those who’ve studied history.

We’ve Seen This Before

Hitler’s Germany brought in medical euthanasia under the guise of “compassion” and the promise of improved public health. Then over the next six years, it enacted a Holocaust unlike anything seen in modern history.

The doctor trials held at the war’s end in Nuremberg (resulting in the Nuremberg Code) were conducted specifically because so many doctors were involved in the brutal and atrocious medical experiments performed on concentration camp victims. Are we so naive to believe that the nature of fallen man has somehow changed since then?

To quote my friend and fellow Canadian David Cooke, Campaigns Manager for Campaign Life Coalition and author of the (highly recommended) book Trudeau’s MAiD Service: A Euthanasia Program for Canada,

Euthanasia not only violates the Hippocratic Oath to “first, do no harm,” which many doctors have sworn to uphold, but it also violates the Law of God – “Thou shalt not kill”. The legalized murder of innocent souls has taken us down a dark and evil path that will only lead to destruction.10

Do You Trust Your Doctor?

In the once-Christianized West, there were many parallels drawn between pastors and doctors in promoting the total health of an individual. Although it was understood that ultimately, life and death was truly God’s purview, nonetheless, Jesus was our perfect example of our great Healer, One who could restore both body and spirit.

So those who committed themselves to emulating Jesus through these special callings were dedicated to bringing healing to those they were privileged to serve.

Even the tradition of doctor/patient confidentiality mirrored the private confession of sin to a pastor or fellow Christian—both situations reflecting a rather vulnerable situation where one confesses to another their weakness and need for either physical or spiritual healing.

However, in both situations, there was a mutual sense of trust in the understanding that both of them wanted what was in the best interest of someone created in the image of the living God and who therefore had inherent worth and value. Unfortunately, because of the abandonment of the authority of God’s Word in both church and culture these days, in many cases, that trust has been broken.

A New View of Me and You

And that is because there has been a shift in the entire metanarrative of life and our very being taught to our citizens in all strata of the public education system, from kindergarten to university.

Consider the very meaning of the term “university.” It refers to the unity in diversity. One can study medicine, art, engineering, or psychology for example—all very diverse pursuits—but what is the unifying factor that knits all of them together?

How did the universe (with the various aspects we can study) come to be? At one time in the West, it was believed to be by the hand of the Creator God of the Bible! Today, the story of evolution is believed instead.

Similarly, at one time, a doctor would not administer an abortive medicine to a woman because the child was considered to have been made in the image of God. Today it is considered by many to be a clump of unwanted cells, a parasite that infringes upon the mother’s freedom. People’s understanding of the origin and value of human beings has changed drastically.

Indeed, “the origin of something determines its meaning, its meaning determines its value and its value determines what you will do with it.”11 Our culture here in Canada needs a paradigm shift back to belief in our Creator, Sustainer, and Redeemer so that we may once again treat people with the dignity they deserve as image bearers of their Maker.

In order to do that, we need believers who will not compromise Scripture with evolutionary beliefs and who will stand on the authority of God’s Word from the very first verse. We need to proclaim the truth of God’s Word in Genesis as the antidote to the foundational issue of devaluing human beings as accidents.

Let’s stand firm in our understanding that “Every word of God proves true; he is a shield to those who take refuge in him” (Proverbs 30:5).