“Hello, you’ve reached the provincial health services authority telephone line for medical assistance in dying…”
This is the automated recording Joannie Cowie got when she called the government to see if she would be eligible for 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. A massive number of Canadians with disabilities like Cowie are trapped in an excruciating cycle of poverty.
“I get angry at people who say you need to budget better because I just want to say to them, go to hell,” she says.
Cowie developed epilepsy when she was six years old, but still managed to pursue education and work — for a time.
“I have my criminology degree. I also have a couple of college degrees, and I taught at a local college here,” she says.
But as her disabilities and pain piled up over the years, her employment options narrowed. That is also a common experience. According to Statistics Canada, only 31 per cent of people who are severely disabled are employed.
Today, Cowie is unable to work, and has no family support. She lives with her daughter, a university student who is also disabled. Together, they must find a way to scrape by on $1,228 from Ontario’s disability support program, and a few hundred more for her daughter. It isn’t nearly enough, and going without is especially hard during Thanksgiving, as Canadians sit down to enjoy a holiday meal.
“All I want is a Butterball turkey, you know … make my own Butterball turkey that I used to make. And I can’t do that anymore,” Cowie told Global News.
“We have about $59 left to buy groceries in a month because our home, we have to have housing insurance. Rent. Hydro is high. Gas is high,” she says. “We just put it together and pay the bills and hope that we can make it every month.”
Dr. Naheed Dosani says that kind of poverty and stress is making people sicker, and driving a lot of Canadians with disabilities to consider ending their lives.
