An article by Yuan Yi Zhu, a Canadian academic [pictured right], that was published as a Special to the National Post on February 18, 2025 explains that 10 years after the Supreme Court of Canada Carter decision (that legalized assisted death in Canada) that Canada's MAiD law was not a slippery slope; it was a cliff.
February marks the 10th anniversary of the Supreme Court of Canada’s decision in Carter v. Canada (Attorney General), in which the court unanimously ruled, against both basic logic and its own precedents, that the right to life, guaranteed by the Constitution, included the right to a state-assisted suicide through what came to be known euphemistically as “Medical Assistance in Dying” (MAiD).
At the time, the court dismissed evidence from other jurisdictions that the legalization of euthanasia inevitably led to its open-ended expansion as well as abuse against the vulnerable. Belgium’s disastrous euthanasia experiment, which saw children and people with psychiatric disorders dying at the hands of doctors, was, the court said, the “product of a very different medico-legal culture…. We should not lightly assume that the regulatory regime will function defectively, nor should we assume that other criminal sanctions against the taking of lives will prove impotent against abuse.” There would be no slippery slope, the court promised us.
Zhu examines his assertions about Canada's euthanasia law.
In 2016, Parliament legalized MAiD for people whose deaths were “reasonably foreseeable.” A short five years later, unnoticed in the midst of the pandemic, Canada’s euthanasia regime was expanded to cover those with chronic conditions whose deaths were not imminent. At the same time, Parliament legalized euthanasia for mental illness alone to come into force in 2023 (it has since been postponed to 2027), making a mockery of our society’s commitment to mental health and suicide prevention.
Zhu writes that the Supreme Court of Canada Carter decision claimed that no slippery slope would happen, which is exactly the opposite of what has happened. Zhu wrote:
An article by Yuan Yi Zhu, a Canadian academic, that was published as a Special to the National Post on February 18, 2025 explains that 10 years after the Supreme Court of Canada Carter decision (that legalized assisted death in Canada) that Canada's MAiD law was not a slippery slope; it was a cliff. ...
Zhu writes that the Supreme Court of Canada Carter decision claimed that no slippery slop would happen, which is exactly the opposite of what has happened. Zhu wrote:
February marks the 10th anniversary of the Supreme Court of Canada’s decision in Carter v. Canada (Attorney General), in which the court unanimously ruled, against both basic logic and its own precedents, that the right to life, guaranteed by the Constitution, included the right to a state-assisted suicide through what came to be known euphemistically as “Medical Assistance in Dying” (MAiD).
At the time, the court dismissed evidence from other jurisdictions that the legalization of euthanasia inevitably led to its open-ended expansion as well as abuse against the vulnerable. Belgium’s disastrous euthanasia experiment, which saw children and people with psychiatric disorders dying at the hands of doctors, was, the court said, the “product of a very different medico-legal culture…. We should not lightly assume that the regulatory regime will function defectively, nor should we assume that other criminal sanctions against the taking of lives will prove impotent against abuse.” There would be no slippery slope, the court promised us.In 2016, Parliament legalized MAiD for people whose deaths were “reasonably foreseeable.”....