SPARE THE MURDERERS. OFFER DEATH TO OUR ELDERS INSTEAD
By Maltese Canadian
Canada’s medical assistance in dying programme was sold as rare, safe and humane just like the one being suggested in Malta. Instead, it has become something else. A recent case from Ontario shows how quickly “choice” can turn into pressure. Malta should study that record before it votes on legalised suicide.
Brigitte Stegemann was 83. She had stomach cancer. She lived in a care home in Belleville, Ontario. She had already refused legalised suicide. It clashed with her Christian faith. Her family say she was not suicidal. She still had good days. Then her granddaughter, who held power of attorney, left for a ten-day trip.
The home arranged a Medical Assistance in Dying (MAID)assessment while the family were away. Relatives say staff pressed a confused and distressed woman. They promised a peaceful death. Days before the injection, Mrs Stegemann broke down. She said she had “made a mistake”. The procedure went ahead anyway. The family say there was no clear final consent. They also say the scene was messy and unprofessional, with an alarming amount of blood. Police in Belleville are now investigating. Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre called the case “disgusting”.
This is not an isolated tale. In another Ontario case, a depressed man with suicidal thoughts met a doctor at a Tim Hortons coffee shop. He was pushed towards legalised suicide by an overeager physician. The story is bleak because it is so ordinary. A coffee counter became the setting for a life-or-death pitch. A system sold as careful can turn casual as we see with the marijuana laws in Malta.
Canada recorded 16,499 MAID deaths in 2024. That figure now ranks among the country’s leading causes of death. Critics argue a state-run health system has an incentive to cut costs. Safeguards look strong on paper. They weaken in practice when a patient is old, ill, lonely or mentally fragile. Choice becomes a slogan. Institutions take the decision. Families are shut out. Paperwork replaces last words.
There is a grim irony here. Malta has no capital punishment. The men convicted over the murder of Daphne Caruana Galizia were spared their lives, as the law requires. The state will not hang the guilty. Yet it now contemplates offering death to innocent old people who have led exemplary lives. That is a strange order of mercy.
Canada’s lesson is plain. Laws that start with the dying do not stay there. Vulnerable people can be steered. A care home can move faster than a family. A doctor can treat despair as a qualifying condition. A small island with an ageing population and stretched services should not assume its rules will hold once the principle is conceded.
Britain’s Parliament, which inspired the Maltese white paper on legalised suicide, recently rejected a similar path. Malta can still choose care over a lethal injection. Canada shows what happens when that choice is treated as a formality. Once the state offers death as a service, the pressure to use it does not stay theoretical. It arrives in a ward, a home, or even a coffee shop.
Malta will not execute convicted murderers, yet it proposes to make assisted death available to people who have harmed no one. That contrast deserves scrutiny. A society’s commitment to protecting life should extend to those who are old, ill, dependent or afraid of becoming a burden. Abolishing capital punishment affirmed that even those guilty of the gravest crimes should not be put to death by the state. Our elders deserve an equally firm commitment to their care and protection. They should never be made to feel that death is the answer to their need for help.