Medical Assistance in Dying (MAID) was never supposed to become a substitute for social supports. Yet in Canada—and increasingly in political rhetoric abroad—there is a growing fear among disabled people that the state is becoming more willing to help us die than to help us live. This essay examines whether MAID is being offered to sick and disabled people in contexts shaped by poverty, inadequate services, or welfare retrenchment, and then turns to the United Kingdom, where the Reform and Conservative parties are openly campaigning on deep cuts to disability and welfare benefits. The through‑line is unmistakable: a political climate in which the lives of disabled people are treated as expendable.
1. MAID in Canada: When “Choice” Is Shaped by Poverty
Recent reporting and testimony from disability organizations show that MAID is increasingly being accessed—or even suggested—by people whose suffering is inseparable from poverty, lack of services, and systemic neglect.
Disabled people report MAID being suggested to them
Inclusion Canada, one of the country’s largest disability advocacy groups, has stated that they receive frequent calls from disabled people who were approved for MAID but want to back out and instead obtain the supports they were previously denied. Others report MAID being suggested by clinicians even when they were not seeking it. iPolitics News
This is not a neutral “choice.” It is a choice structured by deprivation.
UN experts warn MAID is being used in a discriminatory way
A 2025 report from the UN Committee on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities concluded that Canada’s Track 2 MAID regime—allowing assisted death for people who are not terminally ill—targets disabled people in ways that are discriminatory. The report found that MAID is being offered in a context where social supports, housing, mental health care, and poverty alleviation are inadequate, creating a situation where disabled people may feel pressured toward death because the state has failed to provide the means to live. Society for the Protection of Unborn Children
The UN warned that MAID risks becoming a “false choice,” where death is framed as a rational response to suffering that is actually produced by inequality.
Canadian parliamentary committees acknowledge systemic unpreparedness
A special joint parliamentary committee recently recommended an indefinite pause on expanding MAID to people whose sole condition is mental illness, citing the lack of adequate supports and the risk to vulnerable populations. CBC
This is a tacit admission that Canada’s social safety net is too weak to ensure that MAID decisions are truly voluntary.
The structural issue: supports are missing
Advocates note that the same systemic failures—poverty, inaccessible housing, lack of home care, and social isolation—are cited by many people seeking MAID. In 2023, nearly half of Track 2 MAID recipients cited social isolation or loneliness as a reason for choosing death. Society for the Protection of Unborn Children
When the state fails to provide the conditions for a dignified life, offering a dignified death becomes ethically fraught.
2. Is MAID Being Used as a De Facto Cost‑Saving Measure?
There is no evidence of an explicit government policy to use MAID as a cost‑saving tool. However, the effect of current policy is indistinguishable from that fear.
- Disabled people unable to secure adequate housing or care are being approved for MAID.
- Clinicians have suggested MAID to people who were seeking support, not death.
- Advocacy groups argue that MAID is expanding faster than the supports needed to ensure genuine autonomy.
As Inclusion Canada put it, Canada has implicitly decided “whose lives are worth living and whose are worth saving.” iPolitics News
The concern is not hypothetical. It is lived reality.
3. The UK: Welfare Retrenchment and the Rhetoric of “Cuts”
While Canada grapples with MAID, the United Kingdom is experiencing a parallel crisis: a political environment in which disabled people are framed as a financial burden.
Reform UK and the Conservatives: Austerity 2.0
Both the Reform Party and the Conservative Party have embraced rhetoric calling for “sweeping” or “swingeing” cuts to welfare spending, including disability benefits. Their messaging frames welfare as bloated, unsustainable, and rife with fraud—despite evidence that fraud rates in disability benefits are extremely low.
This rhetoric is not neutral. It primes the public to accept policies that will push disabled people deeper into poverty.
The danger of austerity narratives
Austerity has already been linked to tens of thousands of excess deaths in the UK over the past decade, disproportionately affecting disabled people. When political parties promise even deeper cuts, they are effectively promising to intensify the conditions that make life unlivable for many.
The moral logic mirrors the MAID debate
In both Canada and the UK, disabled people face:
- Shrinking supports
- Increasing bureaucratic hostility
- Political narratives that portray us as costly burdens
- Policies that make survival harder while offering no meaningful alternatives
In Canada, this manifests as MAID being offered in contexts of deprivation.
In the UK, it manifests as political parties campaigning on the promise to increase that deprivation.
The underlying message is the same: disabled lives are negotiable.
4. The Politics of Abandonment
What ties these developments together is not a conspiracy but a political economy that treats disabled people as expendable.
- When welfare is cut, disabled people are pushed toward crisis.
- When services are inadequate, suffering is reframed as inevitable.
- When MAID is offered in this context, it becomes a release valve for systemic failure.
- When political parties campaign on cutting supports further, they normalize the idea that disabled people’s lives are too expensive to sustain.
This is not compassion. It is abandonment dressed up as choice.
5. Conclusion: A Call for a Different Politics
As a disabled person who has witnessed sick and disabled people suffer through decades of austerity, assessments, and bureaucratic hostility, I see a dangerous convergence: a world where the state is increasingly willing to help us die while becoming less willing to help us live.
MAID should never be an answer to poverty.
Welfare cuts should never be framed as fiscal responsibility.
And disabled people should never be treated as a budget line to be trimmed.
If society wants to talk about dignity, then dignity must begin with life—not with the state’s willingness to end it.
No comments:
Post a Comment