‘Bill C7: An Overview of Available Help’ by Jane Shi

Medical assistance in dying (MAID) has been legal in Canada since 2016, and Bill C-7, passed in 2021, expanded access to persons whose natural death is not reasonably foreseeable but nevertheless suffer from a ‘grevious and irremediable medical condition.’ The potential problems MAID poses for people who are, for example, seriously ill but not dying, old, and have disabilities were flagged from the beginning of discussions around the law. The passage of Bill C-7 thoroughly worried disability communities, who argued that their lives are already negatively affected by ableist assumptions, and that they lack the resources necessary to flourish. A text accompanying Jane Shi’s 10-word poem, written by Aislinn Thomas, observes that ‘most disabled people will tell you, our bodies are not the main source of our suffering. Systemic discrimination and an utter dearth of support is.’ In Shi’s poem, people with disabilities are now seen as ‘intolerable’ in the light of broader societal competition, and what society offers them is an early death.

The extension of MAID in Canada was brought about by a court case in which the two plaintiffs, Nicole Gladu and Jean Truchon, both had debilitating degenerative medical conditions, physical disabilities and wanted to have the option of dying with MAID at their chosen time. Bill C7 was also, for example, supported in the Senate by Senator Chantal Petitclerc, a person with a disability and former Paralympian. Yet disability advocates, including Aislinn Thomas and Jane Shi, have argued that the choices of white, relatively affluent individuals do not reflect the majority of people with disabilities in Canada, who are poor and racialized, and do not have the resources they need to live, much less to thrive. In this view, an intersectional power analysis reveals that the choices associated with the extension of MAID actually serve to perpetuate different forms of oppression.