The Canadian population is aging. Boomers are concerned about their end-of-life care and a seemingly ceaseless stream of horrific accounts of elder abuse is being proliferated through the media. A 2010 Ekos Research poll revealed that 9 in 10 Canadians are familiar with the term ‘elder abuse’. Canadians are growing older – often facing health challenges – and as a result becoming increasingly vulnerable to abuse.
As a nation, we’re responding to this demographic shift in a variety of ways.
“Elder Law” lawyers are playing a key role by advising clients on matters relating to estate planning, and medical, disability and guardianship issues. This professional assistance has become critical to ensuring increased protection of seniors’ physical, emotional and financial well-being. As of October 2009, 1,500 Canadian lawyers had joined the Canadian Bar Association’s Elder Law section, which provides resources on this important field of law.
The federal government has also recognized the need to tackle this issue head-on. In May 2007 it created the National Seniors Council, which focuses much of its energies on raising awareness of elder abuse. The 2008 Federal Budget committed $13 million to help identify elder abuse and to provide support to those who need it.
In addition, the issue is being carefully studied and researched. In 2010, the Quebec government announced that it was establishing a research chair at the Université de Sherbrooke to tackle the issue of elder abuse as part of a government action plan. In June 2011, the Canadian Centre for Elder Law published a discussion paper which reviewed a number of Canadian court decisions involving elder abuse or neglect. Most recently, on August 9, 2011, the Law Commission of Ontario (LCO) released its Draft Framework for the Law as it Affects Older Adults and public consultations are now taking place.
Elder abuse is a tragedy that requires compassion, consideration, and care from Canadians in order that it be eliminated, perhaps become unthinkable. However, while the nation considers how best to care for, empower and protect senior citizens, some individuals and groups are aggressively promoting assisted suicide and euthanasia as means to demonstrate care for these vulnerable Canadians. These procedures are not a loving response to suffering, as I’ve argued before, and as many others have also shared.
In fact, euthanasia and assisted suicide appear to vastly increase rates of elder abuse even when so-called safeguards are in place. This has been amply and clearly demonstrated in studies conducted in jurisdictions which have legalized the procedures. These practices make vulnerable people even more susceptible to abuse.
For example, a standard ‘safeguard’ put in place to protect individuals from ‘involuntary suicide’ has been that of ensuring patient consent. However, a 2005 study conducted in the Netherlands, where assisted suicide and euthanasia are legal, found that 500 individuals are euthanized annually without having provided consent. In short, they were simply killed – ‘euthanasia’ against their will. Similar findings were noted in Belgium, another ‘consent only’ country. In some cases, doctors simply euthanized patients because it was judged ‘to be in the patient’s best interest.’
Once legalized, a pattern has emerged that safeguards are often found to be an unnecessary restraint on medical professionals, and thus cease to be bulwarks against abuse and patient killing. Again, consider the Netherlands. The original criteria for euthanasia set out that only terminally ill, suffering, competent adults who repeatedly requested and consented to death could seek voluntary euthanasia. Now, none of those requirements remain. Individuals have been killed in hospitals without their input. The laws and official guidelines of the nation have been watered down and modified by judicial interpretation to the point where no physical suffering or even illness need be demonstrated. Even more shocking, in 2004, the Groningen Protocol was implemented and extended euthanasia to children and newborns – who clearly cannot consent to their death.
As Supreme Court of Canada Justice John Sopinka noted in Rodriguez v. Canada, assisted suicide is ungovernable; it is not possible to devise safeguards which would adequately protect the vulnerable. The same can be said of euthanasia.
If we, as a society, are sincerely concerned about elder abuse – how it devastates Canadian seniors, families and communities – we cannot support the legalization of assisted suicide and euthanasia. We need to make the effort to properly understand the practices and societal consequences of these procedures. We need to learn from the tragedies and horrors occurring in Belgium, the Netherlands and other jurisdictions. We need communicate this information back to our friends, family members, Parliamentarians, the media and groups seeking to decriminalize these measures. And, we need to do so clearly, respectfully and tirelessly.
Decriminalizing these acts would communicate to Canada’s aging and increasingly vulnerable elders that rather than honour them, the nation has chosen their premature death as a solution to our assessment of their suffering and to a straining health care system. Frankly, I am concerned that even during the brief period when consent laws might hold, my loved ones, whether they are elderly, disabled or terminally ill will feel pressured to end their lives.
Please join the EFC in taking action today.