Advance requests for lethal injection are illegal in Canada. Hundreds have made them anyway – Lifesite News
One of the main objections to the UK’s assisted dying bill is the phenomenon of increasing scope.
Canada’s experience has shown over time that the number of people legally allowed to kill themselves with the state’s blessing has steadily increased to include forms of mental illness. That’s officialy! Now there is increasing evidence that Canada’s ‘strict’ laws around assisted dying/suicide are being ignored.
A lesson the British members of Parliament would do well to consider before condemning vulnerable Brits to assisted suicide instead of legilating for assistance.
By Jonathon Van Maren, Lifesite News, Mon May 26, 2025
- Article URL: https://www.lifesitenews.com/blogs/advance-requests-for-lethal-injection-are-illegal-in-canada-hundreds-have-made-them-anyway/, sound only podcast available
The Criminal Code of Canada requires that a person’s consent for euthanasia be given immediately before the procedure. But in 2024, Quebec authorized ‘advanced requests.’
(LifeSiteNews) — In the fall of 2024, Quebec authorized “advanced requests” for euthanasia. From October 30 to April 17, almost 650 Quebecers filled out a form that would sanction their deaths by lethal injection at a later date, when they are incapable of giving consent due to advanced illness or mental decline. The UN Committee on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities has called on Canada to halt acceptance of this practice; Canada has thus far not responded.
There are two ways the media can respond to this practice. The first is by noting the horrifying consequences. In the Netherlands, for example, a woman with dementia was physically held down by her family and given a lethal injection by a doctor after the tranquilizer that had been slipped in her coffee failed to render her unconscious. She had been living a happy life at her care home and had no idea what was happening when she was killed. Her family claims this is what she would have wanted. The doctor was cleared of any wrongdoing.
Much of the Canadian press is taking the opposite approach, instead publishing the sort of pieces that Dying with Dignity so desperately wants us to read (in fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if they facilitated many or most of these stories). A grotesque puff piece recently published by City News highlights this approach.
Titled “Medical assistance in dying: Quebecer’s journey for right to make advance MAID request,” the article fails to even mention that “advance requests” are a violation of the Criminal Code of Canada, specifically sections 241.2(2)(b) and 241.2(3), which require that a person’s consent for euthanasia be given immediately before the procedure, to ensure that the person being killed has the capacity to confirm their decision at the time of the lethal injection. This, of course, is impossible with advance requests.
RELATED: Former Quebec politicians publicly discuss euthanizing 24-year-old disabled woman
But the Canadian media, which failed utterly to predict the conveyor belt of grim tragedies that our euthanasia regime would produce, has not learned any lessons. Thus, we are being treated to stories like this one:
Sandra Demontigny is one of them. She’s a resident of Lévis, near Quebec City, and suffers from early-onset Alzheimer’s. Demontigny was among those fighting for this right: for a person to be able to give their consent — sometimes years in advance — to receive MAID when their condition meets certain criteria and when they are no longer able to consent.
“MAID is the better way to die for me,” she said. “Often, I say that I don’t want to die. I would like to live forever. I really am really in love with life. But with my disease, it’s just worse and worse. I know that at some time it will be time to go,” said Demontigny.
Demontigny saw her father suffer from Alzheimer’s and has decided that she would like to be killed before she endures similar symptoms. What neither the journalist nor the daughter seems to realize is that they cannot advocate for that “choice” without fundamentally dehumanizing everyone who suffers from dementia.
“She said what her father went through is hard to describe — like talking to himself in the mirror thinking it was someone else or walking on all fours, banging his head on the wall,” the article reads. This, of course, is unsubtly making the case that it is better to be dead than to suffer in that fashion. The particular case cannot be made without the general case being made, too. According to CityNews:
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She admits that it’s getting harder for her, as her autonomy is more and more limited. She describes it as living with a second skin. “She’s always, always with me. And she never leaves me. She’s just there all the time. And sometimes she just gets another symptom,” said Demontigny.
Sacha Fontaine, Demontigny’s son, says that he knows his mom feels humiliated sometimes. “Because you can’t have the same role around you that you used to have,” he said to her. “For me, she used to be like — she’s still my mom — but she had a role of reassurance, and she was confident, and she had all she possessed,” he said. “But now she’s more and more demanding, so she needs more and more help. I think the switch of role is really hard, even in our son and mother relationship.”
In that exchange, too, we see the way family pressures play a role in the desire for euthanasia. The son is not being reassuring—he is telling her that the role reversal is “demanding” and difficult. That is surely true, but he is not contradicting her desire for euthanasia. When someone suggests suicide and we affirm their plan, we also affirm their fears that their loved ones believe they would be better off dead, too.
Indeed, Fontaine told CityNews: “I’m really, really proud of my mom because it’s a big, a big transition that has been made in Quebec. She has really been part of this change, and I’m really proud that she made this participation. Now that it has been changed in politics, it needs to be applied in our lives and that’s when it gets more emotional than factual.”
As for Demontigny herself: “Now that I signed my form and everything is set, for me, I really I feel more assured…I think the better way is to stay in the present. Because when I think of before, I’m sad, and when I think of the future, I’m scared.”
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