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Comment by mardifoufs | Hacker News Reader

By Americans? Why do some Canadians try to sweep under the rug actual debates by dismissing them as being "american arguments"? Surely as a Canadian you have seen that there has been a constant debate about the limits and excesses of MAID? Even the CBC has a few yearly articles about someone getting euthanized because they wanted to die because they were too poor and similar.

I mean, we live in a country where the ruling party has 30% of the vote, and 35% when they had a majority in parliament. So why pretend that disagreements with Canadian policy is somehow just coming from Americans not understanding our wonderful country? It's super weird and it's oddly common on places like here and Reddit.

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>Why do some Canadians try to sweep under the rug actual debates by dismissing them as being "american arguments"?

Because we live here, it's not as big a deal as right-wing ideologues would like you to believe, and it's usually American religious conservatives (or Canadian wannabe-Americans) doing the hand-wringing and the clutching at pearls.

>Surely as a Canadian you have seen that there has been a constant debate about the limits and excesses of MAID?

Yes, there has been spirited debate about a major shift in public health policy. Are you suggesting this is somehow bad?

It's easy for you to say it's not a big deal when you're not the one getting killed by the government.

Your choice of words implies it's the government murdering it's citizens. These people have requested it from a medical doctor.

I said killed, not murdered. It is killing plain and simple, and if we cannot face up to that fact as a society then we are surely not ready to make the decision.

You keep conveniently skipping over the fact that these people are requesting it. Two different physicians need to give their assent before MAID can proceed.

You are being dishonest. I'm not going to engage with you further.

Requesting what? To be killed. Sorry if this is hard to admit but that's just it. I'm not trying to be inflammatory or edgy, just the plain definition of words is such that to actively cause someone to stop living is signified by the word "killing".

Let me guess, you’re American, right?

I'm Dutch. In case it matters, my opinion of our own relatively progressive euthanasia/end of life care system is quite positive.

Yes, they are asking for it. But ignoring the context around it is extremely disingenuous. When you request to die because of lack of adequate care (due to our shitty health system), it is very different than requesting it because of incurable, unbearable pain. You are also ignoring the incentives that it cause, and already handwaived the cases where it was shown that staff was suggesting MAID when it shouldn't have.

I do want to be killed if I want to.

I'm Canadian. So who's we? And yes the point is that there is a debate. Constantly bringing up the American boogeyman in online debates implies that there isn't any actual debate in Canada, and that's it's only controversial outside of the country

>Yes, there has been spirited debate about a major shift in public health policy. Are you suggesting this is somehow bad?

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