Thank you for the opportunity to be here today. I am coming to you today from the traditional and unceded territory of the Lkwungen, Songhees and Esquimalt peoples.
Inclusion Canada is a national grassroots organization made up of 13 provincial-territorial associations and 300 local associations representing over 40,000 individuals with intellectual disabilities and their families. For over six decades, we've advocated for children and adults with intellectual disabilities to be recognized as inherently human and of equal worth and value. Our federation has been at the forefront of trying to end institutionalization, protect lives and secure equal access to health care.
Canadians with disabilities do not yet enjoy a life of rights and opportunities equivalent to those without disabilities. This is the deeply rooted nature of ableism. Not a single national organization of persons with disabilities supported the expansion of MAID, and over 200 independent, non-affiliated organizations representing persons with disabilities actively opposed the expansion.
One organizational voice appears to have prevailed over all our voices. This one organization is not constituted of or by persons with disabilities and has never been on the front lines of advocating for needed supports, funding or systemic change to improve the lives of persons with disabilities, yet its voice prevails by claiming the dignity of persons with disabilities lies simply in their death. I can't think of a more telling example of paternalism and ableism, which together are as insidious and ugly as racism, and now as deadly.
We know a Canada where persons with intellectual disabilities were warehoused by the tens of thousands in institutions—institutions run by health care practitioners who segregated, isolated, maltreated, forcibly sterilized and anonymously buried persons with intellectual disabilities. We know a Canada where Canadians with disabilities were denied equal access to life-saving transplants, where infants with treatable conditions went untreated and were allowed to die from preventable conditions and where others had or have DNR orders imposed on them without their or their families' consent. We know a Canada where, if a parent murders their child with a disability, they are characterized as a “mercy killer”, and where, during COVID, people with disabilities were threatened by triage protocols.
This is the context in which we see MAID. It is impossible for the lives of persons with disabilities to be safeguarded by a system reliant on the subjective opinion of health care practitioners as if they live, work and think outside our culture of endemic ableism.
As Canadians, we acknowledge the vastly higher rates of suicide among indigenous youth and adults to be a tragic consequence of historical and societal devaluation, one that is crying out to be remedied. No one suggests that so many indigenous people kill or attempt to kill themselves as a function of being indigenous, but rather because of factors outside of themselves that lead to their suicide. Instead, we recognize this crisis as a tragedy at the personal, family, community and national levels to be prevented through action that remedies the socio-historical and current factors that lead to far too many indigenous people committing or attempting to commit suicide.
In this case, an individual's choice to end their life does not outweigh the necessity to maintain this group and others' protection under the Charter of Rights and Freedoms by prohibiting assisted suicide on the basis of being indigenous or of race or gender or any other specific population. Only persons with disabilities, as an identifiable group, are now less protected under our charter.
Imagine a line of people seeking to end their lives and being sorted into two: those whose suicides need to be prevented and those with a disability who are simply offered death. Let's be honest: It's not their perceived suffering that separates one from the other, but judgment as to the worth of one life in contrast to another, given one's disability.
Persons with disability struggle to be perceived as equally valued, escape poverty, obtain essential supports, find an affordable and accessible place to live, secure employment and obtain equal medical care. Then, when overwhelmed by all these challenges, the answer we give them is “death”. This is the manifestation of cruelty in a law now being considered for extension to those with a mental illness, and to mature minors and others, all inclusive of children and adults with disabilities.
In closing, we do not support the expansion of MAID and call upon Parliament to reinstate the legislation that restricted it to those near the end of their lives, legislation that does not discriminate on the basis of disability by only permitting MAID for those near the end of life equally. In this context, disability is not a prejudicial factor. It is increasingly urgent that we return Canadians with disability to their inherent and full rights by restricting MAID to Canadians near the end of their life.
Thank you.