‘I could live 30 years

The April Hubard Theater sits on the stage where she is planning to die later this year.

That is not finished, but the 39 -year performance and the BerleScist have been approved to die aided under Canada’s rapidly liberal laws.

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She is talking to BBC News from the bus stop theater, an intimate auditorium, with less than 100 seats, in Eastern city Halifax, Nova Scotia.

A single spotlight was illuminated on a platform that she has performed several times before, she states that she is planning to die here “within months of her adjacent 40th birthday”. She will join her family and a small group of friends.

The April plans to be in a “large comfortable bed”, which she calls a “festive” moment when a medical professional will inject a deadly dose in his bloodstream.

She says, “I want to be surrounded by people I love and just everyone has caught me in a huge kudal puddle and is surrounded by love and support to breathe her last,” she says.

April was born with Spina Bifida and later detected the tumor based on her spine, which says she has left her in constant, weak pain.

She has been taking strong opioid pain relievers for more than 20 years and applying for medical aid in dying (maid) in March 2023. While she can still live with her position for decades, she qualified to end her life seven months after applying. It is possible for those who are ill to receive approval within 24 hours.

“My pain and pain is increasing and I do not have the quality of life that makes me happy and fulfills,” says April. Every time she moves or breathes, she says that it seems that the tissue from the base of her spine “is” drawn like a rubber band that extends far away “, and that her lower limbs leave her in pain.

We meet as April, about 3,000 miles away, MPs are investigating proposals to legalize the aided dying in England and Wales. He voted in principle in support of those plans in November 2024, but the months of detailed investigation have been followed – and the Commons and Lords require further votes before the bills may be made a law.

This week, BBC saw a man’s death in CaliforniaWhere the aided dying laws are similar to people being considered in Westminster.

Critics say that Canada is an example of “slippery slope”, which means that once you pass a aided dying law, it will essentially widen its scope and will be of low security measures.

Canada is now one of the most generous systems of dying in the world, which is similar to that operation in the Netherlands and Belgium. It introduced the maid in 2016, initially a serious and incurable physical illness for sick adults, who cause unbearable pain. In 2021, the need to get sick was removed, and in two years, the Canadian government plans to open the maid for adults with only one mental illness and no physical illness.

Opponents of the maid told us that death is being seen as a standard treatment option for people with disabilities and people with complex medical problems.

“It is easy to get medical aid in dying in Canada, as it is to support the government,” says Andrew Gurza, a disability awareness advisor and friend of April.

Andrew, who has a cerebral palsy and uses a wheelchair, says he respects the April decision, but tells us: “If my disability declines and my care needs, then I still want to live here. To know that there is a law that is saying that you can end your life easily – it is a really frightening – it is really frightening.”

Before he was approved for the maid, April was evaluated by two independent physicians, who needed to inform her grief and offer alternative treatment ways.

“There are safety measures,” she says, when we press her about people with disabilities who feel threatened by aid die, or whether the maid is being used as a shortcut for better quality care. “If this is not right for you and you are not leading the charge and choosing a maid, you will not be able to access it until it is for the exact reasons,” she says.

In 2023, 15,343 maid deaths occurred, representing one in 20 of all deaths in Canada – a ratio that has increased dramatically since 2016 and is the highest in the world. The average age of the recipients was 77.

All but in a handful of cases, the deadly dose was given by a doctor or nurse, also known as voluntary euthanasia. We talked to a doctor, Eric Thomas said that he has helped 577 patients die.

The Canadian Association of Made Validers and President of the providers, Dr. Konia Trouton has also helped hundreds of patients die since the law was introduced.

The process is the same every time – she reaches the house of the person who has been approved for the maid and asks if they want to move forward with it that day. She says that the patients always direct the process and then “ready to up and go to the head and go”.

“It gives me an honor and duty and gives me a privilege that they are able to help them with their family in the final moments with their family, with those who love them around them and to know that they have done that decision thinking and well,” she says. If the answer is yes, she opens her medical bag.

What happens next while displaying the BBC, Dr. Trouton briefly put a tournicate on my arm. She shows me that the needle will be inserted into a vein behind my hand to allow an intravenous infusion of deadly drugs.

He also has a stethoscope in his medical bag. “Strange, these days I use more to determine if no one has a heartbeat, rather than that they do,” she says to me.

A list of organizations in the UK offered support and information with some issues of this story BBC Action Line

Some 96% of the 96% of the maid provisions are under “Track One” where death is “properly visionary”. Dr. Trouton says that patients mean that patients are on “trajectory towards death”, who can be faster than a person who has spread cancer rapidly and live in only weeks or with other Alzheimer’s “who may have five to seven years”.

Other 4% maid deaths fall under “track two”. These are adults, such as April, who are not dying, but suffering from a “severe and unbearable medical state” for them.

This is contrary to the bill of Labor MP Kim Leadbucer, which is to legalize the death aided in England and Wales, which says patients should expect to die within six months. Westminster bill will not allow doctors to give a deadly dose-but patients will have to self-administration, usually swallow them.

Death through intravenous infusion normally takes place in just a few minutes, as deadly drugs go straight into the bloodstream, while swallowing drugs means that patients usually take a time of one or two hours, but they can take long too much, although they are usually unconscious after a few minutes.

Dr. Trouton told me that she considers the Canadian system faster and more effective, as other maid providers. “I worry that if some people cannot swallow due to their pathological process, and what if they are not able to take full quantity of the drug due to difficulties in breathing or difficulties in swallowing?”

But opponents argue that it is being used as a cheap option to provide adequate social or medical support.

One of them is a GP in London, Ontario. Ramona is Koelho, whose practice is struggling to get many marginalized groups and medical and social support. That Dr. A maid with trouton is part of the death review committee, which examines cases in the province.

Dr. Koelho told me that the maid was “out of control”. “I would not even call it slippery slope,” she says “Canada has fallen from a rock.”

“When people have suicide ideology, we used to meet with them with consultation and care, and for people with terminal disease and other diseases we could reduce that grief and help them give them better life,” she says. “Still we are now seeing that as a suitable request to die and end their lives very quickly.”

While Dr. In Koelho’s surgery, I was introduced to Vicky Sellan, a retired nurse, whose mother Sharon Scribner died of lung cancer in April 2023, 81 years of age. Vicky told me that in the last days of her mother in the hospital, she was repeatedly offered a maid option by medical staff, which calls it a “sales pitch.

The family, who is Catholic, discharged his mother to die at home, where Vicky says that her mother had a “beautiful, peaceful death”. “It seems to us that we can’t bear, and we cannot suffer a little, and that somehow they have now decided that we need to die, where we have been dying for years.

“Suddenly we are now telling people that this is a better option. This is an easy way and I think it is just robbing people of hope.”

So is Canada an example of the so -called slippery slope? It is certainly true that the eligibility criteria have become dramatically wider because the law was introduced nine years ago, so the answer to critics would be a strong yes and will serve as a warning for Britain.

Canadian -aided dying laws were run by court decisions. The Supreme Court directed the Parliament that prohibition on assisted dyeing violated the charter of the country’s rights and freedom. Extension of eligibility for those who were not ill were in a reaction to another court verdict.

In the UK, judges in the most senior courts have repeatedly stated that any possible change in the law around assisted dying is a case for Parliament, after Tony Nicinson’s choice, Dianne Preity and Noel Conway brought cases that debated a blanket ban on auxiliary suicide, which violated their human rights.

April knows that some people can see her, a young woman, and wonder why she will die.

“We are the masters of masking and are not allowing people to see that we are suffering,” she says. “But in fact, there are days that I can’t hide it, and there are many days where I can’t lift my head from the pillow and I can’t eat anymore.

“This is not a way I want to live for another 10 or 20 or 30 years.”

Additional reporting by Joshua Falcon.