My name is Alex Cosh . I'm acting on behalf of Gabrielle Peters as her echo today.
Good morning, I'm joining you very early in the day from the unceded territories of the Squamish, Musqueam and Tsleil-Waututh nations.
Modern western ableism, and particularly scientific ableism, serve as historical and ongoing links between colonialism and MAID. Modern western ableism forms the basis and provides the rhetorical and pseudoscientific framework for constructing hierarchies, defining other and establishing lesser, as well as delineating arbitrary lines between “deserving” and “undeserving”. Within your ableist system, track two MAID extends the coercive but seemingly arm’s-length power of the state to provide a designated class of citizens with premature death at the hands of the state.
I'm speaking to you today as the co-founder of the Disability Filibuster, a national grassroots initiative started by Catherine Frazee and myself on the eve of the passing of Bill C-7 and the creation of its second track for MAID.
Disability Filibuster was in part a response to disabled people being marginalized from the discussion and decision-making around Bill C-7 and our frustration that our collective anger was cordoned off and isolated, much like our lives.
Disability Filibuster was the only space created for the only people targeted by the expansion of MAID to voice their views. The media locked down and was dominated by the endless public relations work of those lobbying for its expansion.
Concerns about the social contagion of covering the ending of one's life were tossed aside. The line between editorializing was blurred to the point of romanticizing and lionizing those who made the choice not to continue to be a “burden on those around them” and to “end things on their own terms”. You could hear Frank Sinatra singing between the lines.
No mention was made of the previously publicly articulated and enthusiastic supports for involuntary euthanasia of disabled people during the time of Tracy Latimer's murder in reshaping the narrative to make these same people the champions of autonomy. The political sphere was dominated by the disproportionate representation of politicians enthusiastic for expanding MAID and all for being seen in a favourable light by its well-connected and well-heeled proponents. A foundation sharing the same name and lineage as the Prime Minister played more than a minor role in propelling supports to the forefront.
Disabled people are a large minority, but we are still the minority, a minority that is disproportionately poor, racialized and not noted for its strong political value and influence, as is evidenced by our policy absence in political platforms and campaigns during elections. We didn't have a chance. There was no place for disabled people in the discourse around the policy that specifically and solely affects disabled people and no one else.
Even today, the only place for us in media coverage is as human interest stories about those among us who have resigned ourselves to applying for MAID after tiring of seeking non-existent supports and unable to gulp down the prospect of a future of subsistence-level poverty inflicted and normalized as a component of our broader dehumanization and oppression. In order to be allowed a presence, you have to agree to die.
So removed, uninterested and ill-informed are our politicians and media about our lives and the discussions that we have that we've found ourselves regularly characterized as right-wing religious fanatics. This characterization is so laughably incorrect that I struggle to express the absurdity of it.
Over the course of two years, Disability Filibuster has hosted approximately 80 hours of Zooms. These included panels, readings, arts, casual conversations and live processing of our grief and exhausted rage. A great deal of knowledge was shared.
However, the truth is that I didn't come here today under the illusion that I can alter minds or inform those who have consistently, persistently and wilfully chosen to do the least possible to inform themselves about the lives of disabled people, particularly those living in poverty and on the extreme margins of society—your society.
I came to put it in on the record: Canada's expansion of MAID to disabled people whose deaths are not reasonably foreseeable reifies and builds on the existing dehumanization of disabled people in Canada, breathes new life into the goals of never-dismantled eugenics and is based on the ableism that formed this country's foundation, and as such, represents a serious threat.
The material and social conditions and absence of positive liberty facing disabled people in Canada are fundamentally different from those of non-disabled people. The very different social contract offered to disabled people has yet to provide us with a guarantee of freedom to live in the community, to not be forced into institutions should our needs exceed those deemed appropriately human, the denial of our equal right to travel, and the provision of infrastructure that would make us intended participants—not unintended participants—in society.
I didn't come here with illusions. I came here to remind you that history changes and that one day our roles will be reversed and you will be the ones answering questions.