Federal minister says she's 'shocked' by suggestion of assisted deaths for some babies

Canada's minister of disability inclusion says she's offended by a Quebec doctor's suggestion that infants less than a year old should have access to medically assisted deaths if they are unlikely to survive and are dealing with severe health issues.

"I find that completely shocking and unacceptable. I would never support going down that road," Carla Qualtrough said in an interview with CBC Radio's The House.

The idea was raised earlier this month at a parliamentary committee hearing reviewing the federal law that governs medical assistance in dying.

Dr. Louis Roy, of Quebec's College of Physicians, said his group believes assisted death could be offered to babies up to one year old "with severe deformities and very serious syndromes for which the chances of survival are virtually nil, and which will cause so much pain that a decision must be made to not allow the child to suffer."

Qualtrough, who is legally blind, said that while she can't speak on behalf of the entire government, "there is no world where I would accept that."

People often make incorrect assumptions about the quality of life that someone with a disability experiences, she said.

Extending assisted death to infants is not one of the topics the parliamentary committee has been tasked with exploring — although it is reviewing whether the practice should be available to so-called "mature minors" who would be old enough to offer informed consent.

That work was supposed to have been completed by now, but the committee has received an extension and will now have until February 17 to hand over its findings to Parliament.

Qualtrough also said she hears frequently that some people with disabilities are seeking assisted deaths because they can't find adequate housing or sufficient care.

"Working with the disability community and hearing very regularly that people's options around MAID are being driven by lack of social supports is devastating," she said.

The federal government first passed a law making a doctor- or nurse practitioner-assisted death legal in 2016. It did so because the Supreme Court of Canada had overturned the existing ban on medically assisted death.

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Canadians who weren't already nearing death became eligible for MAID in 2021, when the government changed the law in response to a lower court ruling. That change allows people with "grievous and irremediable" medical conditions who are experiencing "intolerable suffering" to seek a doctor's help to die — even if their natural deaths are decades away.

Qualtrough said it should not be easier to access a medically assisted death than to get a wheelchair — but it is.