Why is it easier to die with dignity than live with dignity?
Living without dignity
Living a dignified life means an individual’s inherent worth is honoured and they have the opportunity to fulfill their potential. It also means that people have access to health care, housing, education, income, and security. But right now in Canada,even though living with dignity should be the most basic universal human right, the lack of support and the gatekeeping of disability support programs is leaving astounding numbers of people in dire conditions.
Because of that, right now in places like Ontario, people are electing to die with dignity because they aren't being afforded the basic means to live with dignity. In Canada. A wealthy country.
Living without Dignity
For a country that talks a big game about human rights (boasts about our Charter of Rights and Freedoms), it's disgusting that so many people living within Canada are living without dignity. It is incredibly telling that we aren't doing everything in our considerable power (and wealth, and resources) to ensure that people's basic needs are met. This is, without a doubt, a policy decision and an ongoing failure of our leaders.
So let's talk about the state of ODSP, why people are choosing Medically Assisted Dying (MAiD), the status of MAiD in Canada right now, and what you can do in the face of failing disability services.
MAiD is an important part of our social safety net, but needs to be combined with strong social support for those to live full and healthy lives—it is not a replacement and cannot be the entirety of our social safety net. See our post, Living and Dying with Dignity.
Wealthy Disabled People Aren't Choosing MAiD
Those of us that consider ourselves without a disability need to understand the privilege with which we approach this topic - and the intersectionality of this issue.
Ableism is pervasive throughout society—think about the lack of accessibility in buildings and workplaces—across all our institutions. Those of us with able-body privilege often fail to notice whether places are accessible or how the disabled community is treated until we ourselves need these services.
We see just how ableist and classist our society is when MAiD is the most comprehensive and accessible part of our social safety net. Wealthy disabled people (often people with family wealth) aren't choosing MAiD, because they have the resources to adapt to our ableist world and that allows them to live with more dignity. Dying with dignity can quickly feel like your only option when you have no access to living with dignity.
“People with disabilities are being forced to choose death in the face of an ableist system that is perpetually refusing to provide the support they need to live. They deserve a real choice. ”
A Broken Social Safety Net
Most provinces have, in theory, support systems in place. Currently, social assistance payments are the conditional and minimum level of income support provided by the government, such as the Ontario Disability Support Program (ODSP), Employment Insurance (EI), and GST Tax credit. They are part of our social safety net: the system designed to ensure all people have access to basic human rights and needs.
But the thing is, over time governments have cut holes in this net—cut funding, programs, committees—and marginalized communities, many of which are not donors and/or systemically excluded from elections, start falling through these holes or, in this case, turning to MAiD as the only accessible service.
I'm sorry—how much?!
The ODSP only provides up to $1169 a month (equiv of $7.31/hr) for anyone living with a disability or illness that prevents them from working full-time + in financial need. That means the maximum amount of support available is still 25% below the poverty line.
To put that in perspective: consider the average cost for a 1 bedroom in each Ontario city (and remember, that's just housing costs alone):
Not only are these payments inhumanely low, these benefits fluctuate and can be taken away if applicants:
Break a rule —e.g. accept a loan or a gift of groceries
Surpass an asset limit — aka manage to accumulate savings
ODSP and MAiD — a systems failure
The state of disability supports in Canada —and Ontario especially—is dire. So dire, that multiple individuals are electing to undergo Medically Assisted Dying so that they might die with dignity rather than live without dignity after being repeatedly denied access to the resources they need.
“My choices are basically to die slowly and painfully, or quickly. Those are the options that are left”
Read that again. We have created a world in which choosing to die is more accessible than disability services and support. This. Is. Canada.
Medically Assisted Dying (MAiD) is a recent program in Canada that allows people to choose when, how, where, and who will be around when they die. The federal government passed legislation enabling individuals to seek MAID in 2016, but it wasn't until 2021 that changes were made to the eligibility criteria, removing the need for one's death to be "reasonably foreseeable."
ODSP and MAiD — a systems failure
These news stories have been met with outrage —and rightfully so!— we are seeing an entire demographic of the population not being provided with the basic services to live with dignity.
But before you get up in arms about Medically Assisted Dying (MAiD) being problematic, remember that MAiD plays an important role in our social safety net, the issue isn't MAiD, it's the lack of comprehensive social services.
We need MAiD and we need livable incomes for people accessing ODSP. Part of our unlearning around disability justice has been reframing our understanding to be that it isn't that disabled people face barriers, it's that society has created barriers for disabled people.
In not providing proper ODSP/disability supports and services but offering MAiD (which is a good thing) we've created a weird sort of societal eugenics experiment where disabled people are not afforded the opportunity to live with dignity. So for some, the only way they get to live with dignity is to choose to die with dignity via MAiD. This. Is. Canada.
Okay, now what?
In Ontario, we have gone so far as to offer ODSP because in principle we believe that people should be able to live with dignity. And while programs like ODSP have proven to be effective at reducing poverty for vulnerable populations, our government has chosen to cut so many holes in this net it is no longer supporting the people it was intended to.
Contact your elected official - www.oncanadaproject.ca/findyourrep
Learn: check out organizations like the Disability Justice Network of Ontario (focus on creating a world where disabled folk are free to be) to learn more about disability justice.
