NATIONAL POST – Just as Ottawa publicly acknowledges that its assisted suicide regime might have gone too far, critics have highlighted the existence of a little-known medical assistance in dying children’s activity book that was funded by the Canadian government.
The book is not intended for children who are themselves seeking assisted death, and it’s not subject to mass-distribution through schools or public libraries. Minors are ineligible for medically assisted death in Canada, although there has been a push by the Quebec College of Physicians to extend the practice to severely disabled newborns.
Rather, the activity book is intended for children who may soon be attending a medically assisted death in person. “Created for young people who have someone in their life who may have MAID,” the group declared in a statement.
MAID is defined in the booklet as the use of medicines to stop a “person’s body from working.”
“When their body stops working, the person dies,” it reads.
The booklet describes MAID as a last-ditch measure reserved only for consenting adults afflicted with an illness or disability that “hurts their body or their mind so much that it feels too hard to keep living.”
Children are guided through the “three medicines” that constitute the lethal injection process, and are urged not to attempt to change the mind of a family member who has opted for assisted death. “As much as other people may want to change their mind, the person who is choosing MAID probably wishes just as strongly that they could change their illness or condition and how it is affecting their life,” it reads.
Financed by Health Canada, the 26-page booklet was written by Ceilidh Eaton Russell, a McMaster University lecturer and a consultant on grief in children. Russell is also behind the handbook Living Dying: A Guide for Adults Supporting Grieving Children and Teenagers.
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