On December 12, 2023, Peel Regional Police laid second-degree murder charges against Kenneth Law in the suicide deaths of 14 people in Ontario. Law had been arrested in May, for selling sodium nitrate and masks as ‘suicide kits’ from online stores and had been charged with counseling or aiding suicide in the deaths of the same victims.
Authorities in the UK, US, New Zealand, and Australia have also launched investigations. Police believe that Law has shipped over 1,200 suicide kits to 40 countries.
Details on the alleged victims in Ontario have not been released by police, other than that they ranged in age from 16-36. However, family members of some of the alleged victims -both in Canada and abroad- have spoken to the media. Stories of depression and mental illness suffered by the victims and outrage by family members over the preying on vulnerable individuals and encouraging people to commit suicide.
The story is breaking as Canada is set to legalize assisted suicide for people suffering solely from mental illness on March 17, 2024. The case shines a spotlight on the tragedy of suicide and the vulnerability of those suffering with depression and other mental illnesses.
The Catholic Register spoke with MP Michael Cooper, who serves as a member of the Special Joint Committee on Medical Assistance in Dying. According to Cooper “the overwhelming evidence presented by medical professionals to the Committee was that it is impossible to predict irremediability in cases of mental illness and that it is difficult to assess if a person is making a rational decision rather than suicidal ideation.”
The tragedy of the suicide deaths in the Law case is obvious to all. But with this coming change to Canada’s euthanasia laws, how many of those same victims would have been eligible for MAID? “We’re heading down a dangerous path,” said Cooper. “The Expert Panel on Maid and Mental Illness, appointed by the liberals, defined a mental disorder as anything in the DSM-5, the standard classification of mental disorders, which includes depression, autism, and addictions.”
Alex Schadenberg, Executive Director of the Euthanasia Prevention Coalition, said the case has similarities with a case in the Netherlands. In July 2023 a man named Alex S was convicted of selling a suicide powder along with instructions, to as many as 1,600. He was sentenced to 3.5 years in prison for the suicide deaths of at least 10 people. In both the crimes of Alex S, and the alleged crimes of Kenneth Law, the perpetuators were making available their suicide kits indiscriminately, to anyone of any age.
Schadenberg also noted, the [alleged] source of Kenneth Law’s suicide kits was known to the euthanasia movement. In a CTV interview with Philip Nitschke, who runs a pro-euthanasia group, he said that many of his members had bought from [Law].
Canada already has one of the most permissive euthanasia regimes in the world, where the presence of a terminal illness is not required, no waiting period exists for those whose death is reasonably foreseeable, and a nurse practitioner has the power to decide on medical eligibility for euthanasia. Many experts believe that expanding eligibility to those whose sole underlying condition is mental illness is putting societies most vulnerable people at risk.
According to Hugh Scher, a constitutional lawyer in Toronto, the Liberal government has opened the [MAID] regime such that it’s broader than any other regime in the world. “This case [Kenneth Law] is a textbook case as to why we should go extraordinarily slowly.”
Will this case lead to a pause in MAID expansion to those suffering from mental illness? MP Cooper is optimistic ‘that the Liberal government will follow the evidence.” He says that “the Liberal government has put blind ideology ahead of medical evidence. It should be stopped.”
And public opinion seems to agree. Philip Horgan, President and General Counsel of the Catholic Civil Rights League, in comments to the Catholic Register, noted that the majority of Canadians do not favour expanding the country’s MAID laws to the mentally ill as reported by a May 2023 poll by Angus Reid.
The Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops has stood firmly against euthanasia and assisted suicide in all forms. In their recent statement on expanding eligibility to persons living with mental illness, it stated “To enable or assist in the suicide of these patients directly contradicts national suicide prevention strategies and reneges on our collective social responsibility to provide persons living with mental health challenges with treatment, support, and hope through therapeutic interventions.”
On December 13, Justice Minister Arif Virani, announced that the government is considering another pause on the expanded eligibility for MAID for those with mental illness.
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