Health
Quadriplegic man dies via euthanasia after developing bed sores waiting at Quebec hospital
66-year-old Quebec man Normand Meunier who died via euthanasia after a 4-day hospital stay left him with severe bed sores
From LifeSiteNews
‘I don’t want to be a burden,’ the 66-year-old man said prior to his death after he developed bed sores due to a lack of specialized care at a hospital in Saint-Jérôme, Quebec.
A quadriplegic man in Quebec was killed via euthanasia after he developed severe bed sores while waiting in a hospital for an extended period of time.
On March 29, Normand Meunier, a 66-year-old quadriplegic man in Quebec, was euthanized in his home after developing bed sores due to a lack of specialized care at the hospital in Saint-Jérôme, Quebec, according to a report by Radio-Canada.
“I don’t want to be a burden. At any rate, the medical opinions say I won’t be a burden for long; as the old folks say, it’s better to kick the can,” Meunier told Radio-Canada in an interview the day before he was killed.
Meunier, whose arms and legs have been paralyzed since 2022 due to a spinal cord injury, went to the hospital’s intensive care for a respiratory virus. According to his partner Sylvie Brosseau, the hospital placed Meunier on a stretcher for 95 hours.
Bosseau revealed that she asked medical staff to provide a specialized bed for Meunier but was told that the hospital would have to order one. According to the hospital, they are investigating the incident, adding that they do have beds available.
After spending four days on a hospital cot, Meunier developed bed sores and a major pressure ulcer on his buttocks, which were so severe that the muscle and bone were exposed and visible.
While Meunier had previously experienced bedsores, he determined to end his life via Medical Assistance in Dying (MAiD), the euphemistic name for Canada’s euthanasia regime, rather than continue to receive treatment.
Unfortunately, Meunier is not the first Canadians to choose MAiD after being given insufficient medical care.
As a result of a healthcare worker shortage, wait times to receive care in Canada have increased to an average of 27.7 weeks, leading some Canadians to despair and opt for euthanasia instead of waiting for assistance.
This was the case of 52-year-old Dan Quayle, a grandfather from British Columbia. On November 24, he chose to be killed via lethal injection after being unable to receive cancer treatment due to the increased wait times.
Throughout the agonizing wait, his family “prayed he would change his mind or get an 11th-hour call that chemo had been scheduled,” but were instead told consistently by the hospital that they were “backlogged.”
Similarly, in 2022, a Winnipeg woman wrote in her posthumously published obituary that she chose to die by assisted suicide after being refused the treatments she needed: “I could have had more time if I had more help.”
However, instead of supporting the healthcare system to prevent Canadians from taking their own lives, the Trudeau government is working to expand access to MAiD by loosening its requirements.
On March 9, 2024, MAiD was set to expand to include those suffering solely from mental illness. This is a result of the 2021 passage of Bill C-7, which also allowed the chronically ill – not just the terminally ill – to qualify for so-called doctor-assisted death.
After massive pushback from doctors, pro-life groups and politicians, the program’s expansion was temporarily paused until 2027.
According to Health Canada, in 2022, 13,241 Canadians died by MAiD lethal injection, which is 4.1 percent of all deaths in the country for that year, and a 31.2 percent increase from 2021.
The number of Canadians killed by lethal injection since 2016 now stands at 44,958.
From the Fraser Institute
Canadians continue to endure long wait times for health care. And while waiting for care can obviously be detrimental to your health and wellbeing, it can also hurt your pocketbook.
In 2024, the latest year of available data, the median wait—from referral by a family doctor to treatment by a specialist—was 30 weeks (including 15 weeks waiting for treatment after seeing a specialist). And last year, an estimated 1.5 million Canadians were waiting for care.
It’s no wonder Canadians are frustrated with the current state of health care.
Again, long waits for care adversely impact patients in many different ways including physical pain, psychological distress and worsened treatment outcomes as lengthy waits can make the treatment of some problems more difficult. There’s also a less-talked about consequence—the impact of health-care waits on the ability of patients to participate in day-to-day life, work and earn a living.
According to a recent study published by the Fraser Institute, wait times for non-emergency surgery cost Canadian patients $5.2 billion in lost wages in 2024. That’s about $3,300 for each of the 1.5 million patients waiting for care. Crucially, this estimate only considers time at work. After also accounting for free time outside of work, the cost increases to $15.9 billion or more than $10,200 per person.
Of course, some advocates of the health-care status quo argue that long waits for care remain a necessary trade-off to ensure all Canadians receive universal health-care coverage. But the experience of many high-income countries with universal health care shows the opposite.
Despite Canada ranking among the highest spenders (4th of 31 countries) on health care (as a percentage of its economy) among other developed countries with universal health care, we consistently rank among the bottom for the number of doctors, hospital beds, MRIs and CT scanners. Canada also has one of the worst records on access to timely health care.
So what do these other countries do differently than Canada? In short, they embrace the private sector as a partner in providing universal care.
Australia, for instance, spends less on health care (again, as a percentage of its economy) than Canada, yet the percentage of patients in Australia (33.1 per cent) who report waiting more than two months for non-emergency surgery was much higher in Canada (58.3 per cent). Unlike in Canada, Australian patients can choose to receive non-emergency surgery in either a private or public hospital. In 2021/22, 58.6 per cent of non-emergency surgeries in Australia were performed in private hospitals.
But we don’t need to look abroad for evidence that the private sector can help reduce wait times by delivering publicly-funded care. From 2010 to 2014, the Saskatchewan government, among other policies, contracted out publicly-funded surgeries to private clinics and lowered the province’s median wait time from one of the longest in the country (26.5 weeks in 2010) to one of the shortest (14.2 weeks in 2014). The initiative also reduced the average cost of procedures by 26 per cent.
Canadians are waiting longer than ever for health care, and the economic costs of these waits have never been higher. Until policymakers have the courage to enact genuine reform, based in part on more successful universal health-care systems, this status quo will continue to cost Canadian patients.
Mackenzie Moir
Senior Policy Analyst, Fraser Institute
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