Law Professor specializing in criminal and mental health law. VAW and disability advocate.
Vancouver
Joined January 2011
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Isabel Grant retweeted
"Stopping MAID for mental illness is necessary. But if it is achieved via a bill that must pass by March 2027, with advance requests attached, Parliament will have learned nothing from the last five years." @rljcoelho
nationalpost.com/opinion/ram…
"Women are more likely to have their conditions wrongly attributed to psychiatric causes, more likely to have symptoms misdiagnosed as psychosomatic, and more likely to experience delays in getting a diagnosis, according to the study." theguardian.com/society/2026…
Isabel Grant retweeted
From my statement to AMAD. You remember - the one where you did not ask me any questions or engage with me?
mssinenomine.substack.com/p/…
Isabel Grant retweeted
"Barriers" has become a repetitive buzzword, used as a blanket label for any rule, law, or regulation. Deliberate obscuring of intent when those act as safeguards, protections and requirements to prevent abuse and protect lives.
It renders word meaningless & as a crip I object.
Isabel Grant retweeted
My oped in @TorontoStar on why we must further suspend #MAID #Euthanasia for mental illness & address current problems with MAID practice + separate that from advance requests for MAID. Online version has links for all points made thestar.com/opinion/contribu…
Isabel Grant retweeted
"I was warned about this by people opposing the [MAID] law that told me, 'We see your motivation is good, but you will see, once you open the door you will not close it and it will open wider.' And this is what happened," former Que Premier Couillard cbc.ca/news/politics/phillip…
Isabel Grant retweeted
Precisely risk of assisted suicide/euthanasia without consent was one of the issues i identified in my report on violence against older women.
Isabel Grant retweeted
If you doubt that Advance Requests for #MAID #euthanasia will result in utterly dehumanizing practices in Canada, just read how a psychiatrist normalizes killing of a person w dementia who resists a euthanasia procedure. In parliamentary testimony & submissions, I argued...
If my advance directive says "please give me MAiD when my dementia gets to the level that I'm a burden on my loved ones", them the answer is you give me MAiD, not respond to my delirious protests.
If you don't know how to "interrogate delirium or confusion", you shouldn't be a doctor.
There is NOTHING HARD about this scenario, except if you don't understand how brains work.
“We urge Parliament to examine how the risks of coercive control and elder abuse will be identified, assessed, and responded to in practice,” the statement says.
“Introducing advance requests for MAID crosses the line between clear consent and no consent, and so it’s certainly no longer a practice where clear consent is the basis for MAID.”
Liberals’ proposed MAID changes spark division - Canadian Affairs canadianaffairs.news/2026/10…
Isabel Grant retweeted
One of the glaring red flags for me around MAID is how its proponents are compelled to distort to pervert the ordinary meaning of language to make their case. Here, a government-funded healthcare system demonstrates its care for the mentally ill by its willingness to kill them.
Opinion: Refusing MAID for mental disorders will come at a terrible cost
theglobeandmail.com/opinion/…
UN recommendations anyone?
"Repeal the Track 2 MAiD , including the provision to, in 2027, Track 2 for persons whose “sole underlying medical condition is a mental illness”;
Not support proposals for the expansion of MAiD to include mature minors and advance requests;"
Isabel Grant retweeted
Split 5-4 Supreme Court Canada ruled on #Indigenous sentencing principles where there is an Indigenous offender and Indigenous victim. Circumstances of both must be considered. #scc #criminallaw
Isabel Grant retweeted
Another way of saying this, is that the degree of 'othering' of people with mental illness is such that many don't imagine it ever happening to them. They fear the possibility of dementia more.
ALT In my experience, more people fear the possibility of personally experiencing dementia than they fear personally experiencing mental illness. The Liberal government understands the collision - or from their perspective, the sweet spot - where ableism, ageism, and the poor capacity for affective forecasting of humans, all meet. I believe they are confident that this is a spot where they can advance and be met with minimal resistance. This is politics. MAiD is political. Creating a taxonomy of humans based on projected lifespan or bodily function is necessarily ableist and using it to defend your preferred distinction of who is killable is tragically and historically illiterate. It is also foolhardy and morally and ethically wrong. MAiD is not a single bullet, it’s an entire magazine. There is only one safeguard that works. Take the gun out of their hands and make killing sick/disabled/dying people illegal again.
I wrote something about today's announcement by Sean Fraser regarding legislation to allow for advance directives with MAiD.
The Liberal govt understands where ableism, ageism, and the poor capacity for affective forecasting of humans, all meet.
mssinenomine.substack.com/p/…
This is terrifying. And to think that Dr. Wiebe finds it amusing to contemplate sedating an elderly patient who is resisting MAiD is macabre.
Isabel Grant retweeted
Your past self said you wanted this but your present self says no. Sorry, your past self was legally 'competent' and your present self is not so...
Isabel Grant retweeted
Please take note below.
#CallItFemicide?
If the Libs gave a damn about limiting MAiD for mental illness they would have supported Bill C-218 yesterday. This proposal is for expansion which precludes opposition – to vote against mental illness you have to allow MAiD for people (mostly old women) with dementia.
What the Carney Liberals are doing here is far more cynical and sinister than many realize: they are holding people with mental illness hostage in order to "trade" for people with dementia.
The Liberals could have voted for @TamaraJansenMP's Bill C-218 to protect people with mental illness. The NDP did. Instead, they voted against it but promised a bill that would eliminate eligibility for those with mental illness as a sole condition but also expand it to those with dementia who have signed an "advanced directive."
"Advanced directives" mean a person can be killed without contemporaneous consent. The UN Committee on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities explicitly warned the government against legalizing it. Even the Trudeau government rejected it. It is enormously complex, and will take a long debate.
Except the March 2027 deadline expanding eligiblity to people with mental illness is looming. That's five months from now. The Liberals are going to say we don't have time to debate advanced directives because we need to rush the bill through to protect people with mental illness.
In other words: Give us people with dementia, or people with mental illness are going to get hurt.
They need to keep the euthanasia happy. They don't want to admit unqualified moral defeat. So instead, they're going to play games and bargain with the lives of the vulnerable. It's one of the most disgusting things I've seen in Canadian politics in a very long time.
Isabel Grant retweeted
They are presenting it as one bill at moment so people who oppose MAiD expansion can't vote in favour because it would mean voting in support of adding advance directives. It's Liberals playing political games with people's lives.
"People continue to discuss MAiD as if it is an area of medicine. It is not. MAID practitioners are exempted from criminal prosecution by law written by the Canadian state. They are paid by provincial governments to carry out killings." @mssinenomine "mssinenomine.substack.com/p/…
Isabel Grant retweeted
This is a Trojan horse. The Liberals plan to bundle the mental illness exclusion with advance requests for MAiD in one bill. No separate votes. MPs must accept both or reject both. Sneaky politics with irreversible consequences. Shame on the Liberals. Canada, wake up.
