Canada’s assisted dying programme has gone too far, says lawyer who tried to take his own life
Warning: This article contains references to suicide
On Friday this week, MPs will debate if England and Wales should legalise assisted dying.
The proposed legislation restricts it to adults with six months or less to live.
Canada introduced assisted dying in 2016 for adults with a terminal illness. In 2021, it was extended to people with no terminal illness and the disabled.
On 17 March 2027, anyone with a serious mental health problem will also be eligible.
Campaigners in Canada argue that the programme, known as MAID [medical assistance in dying], has gone too far.
Orlando Da Silva has struggled with crippling depression since he was a nine-year-old boy.
The high-flying Ontario lawyer is 56 years old now and has tried to take his own life a number of times.
Orlando Da Silva
He says if MAID had been offered to him when he was at his lowest, he would have taken the option to end his life.
But he argues that people like him need help with their condition – not help to die.
“You just think you’re a worthless little boy and eventually a worthless teenager, and then one day, a worthless man,” Orlando says, describing the impact of his mental health on his childhood and later into his adult life.
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Assisted dying: Lessons from Canada
Working as a top barrister in the province of Ontario helped Orlando. It was a distraction from the suicidal thoughts that would overwhelm him when he left his office on the 47th floor of a downtown Toronto skyscraper.
“If you could measure it on a scale of zero to 10 [where] 10 is the happiest you’ve ever been, and zero is suicidal, my cruising altitude is about five or six, so I rarely get better than that.”
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Orlando has received almost all of the conventional therapies available for his condition.
“Now I have a condition called treatment-resistant depression, which means I’ve been on more than 40 different kinds of antidepressants. I’ve had 13 electroconvulsive shock treatments. I’ve been on ketamine treatments. And nothing works.
“So the critical problem for me with this condition is that it escalates into a major depressive episode every 18 to 24 months.”
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What happens if assisted dying bill passes?
Safeguards in place for Orlando
He says he has now learned how to manage his depression by reminding himself that the cycle will eventually end no matter how impossible the situation might feel at the time.
“I just push myself through one day at a time. Sometimes it’s one hour at a time, one minute at a time, one breath until the next one. Because I know it doesn’t last forever, but when I’m in that moment, I think it will, and there’s nothing anyone can say to convince me.”
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MPs split ahead of assisted dying vote
He also has safeguards in place designed to protect him from himself.
“I’ve developed tools and a support network and even a 10-point scale that I share with my family and friends, so they can see how I’m doing, and they know I’m at a three or below, it’s time for an intervention.”
Orlando nearly died in 2008 after a failed suicide attempt. It led to six months in hospital.
He is now using his experience to try and help others like him who might choose an assisted death when they are allowed to in just over two years.
“It scares me to death. If it was available earlier, I would have chosen it in 1994. I would have tried it and I would have asked for it in 2002, in 2004, in 2008 and when I attempted my suicide in 2012, in 2014. And I’m alive because it’s not available now and because I failed in 2008.”
Fears over Canada’s programme
The move to include mental illness in Canada’s assisted dying programme was delayed twice because of fears around the impact it will have on the country’s health system.
By offering people with mental health issues an assisted death, Orlando warns, it further reinforces their sense of worthlessness.
“You want the pain to end, right? And the last thing you need is someone in a white coat who says: ‘Well, I see it’s kind of rough for you. How about we help you and your life? Do you like that?
“Now, does that say you’re worthwhile if you hear that? Does that say you have value? Does that contradict that voice in your head? Or does it reaffirm and confirm it?”
“We need to help. We need to give hope. Don’t need an easy death, like I want us to be a better society than that. If they say we’re judged by how we treat our most vulnerable. How do we treat people with mental illness who want to die?”
Orlando’s struggle is not over. But for him life is worth living no matter how hard it gets.
“Thank God I didn’t succeed, thank God I failed because if I had succeeded, I would never have met my wife.
“I never would have had my three beautiful daughters. I never would have had the rewarding personal and professional career I’ve had since and I would never have learned all that’s beautiful in this world from them.”
Anyone feeling emotionally distressed or suicidal can call Samaritans for help on 116 123 or email jo@samaritans.org in the UK. In the US, call the Samaritans branch in your area or 1 (800) 273-TALK
The twin threats of climate change and Russian malign activity in the Arctic must be taken “deadly seriously,” David Lammy has warned.
Sky News joined him on the furthest reaching tour of the Arctic by a British foreign secretary.
We travelled to Svalbard – a Norwegian archipelago that is the most northern settled land on Earth, 400 miles from the North Pole.
It is at the heart of an Arctic region facing growing geopolitical tension and feeling the brunt of climate change.
Mr Lammy told us the geopolitics of the region must be taken “deadly seriously” due to climate change and “the threats we’re seeing from Russia”.
We witnessed the direct impact of climate change along Svalbard’s coastline and inland waterways. There is less ice, we were told, compared to the past.
David Lammy and Norway’s Foreign Minister Barth Eide view the melting Blomstrandbreen glacier. Pic: PA
The melting ice is opening up the Arctic and allowing Russia more freedom to manoeuvre.
“We do see Russia’s shadow fleet using these waters,” Mr Lammy said. “We do see increased activity from submarines with nuclear capability under our waters and we do see hybrid sabotage of undersea cables at this time.”
In Tromso, further south, the foreign secretary was briefed by Norwegian military commanders.
The foreign secretary visiting SvalSat, a satellite ground station which monitors climate in Svalbard. Pic: PA
Vice Admiral Rune Andersen, the Chief of Norwegian Joint Headquarters, told Sky News the Russian threat was explicit.
“Russia has stated that they are in confrontation with the West and are utilising a lot of hybrid methods to undermine Western security,” he said.
But it’s not just Vladimir Putin they’re worried about. Norwegian observers are concerned by US president Donald Trump’s strange relationship with the Russian leader too.
Norwegian observers are concerned about the Russian leader – and Trump being ‘too soft’ on him. Pic: AP
Karsten Friis, a Norwegian defence and security analyst, told Sky News: “If he’s too soft on Putin, if he is kind of normalising relations with Russia, I wouldn’t be surprised.
“I would expect Russia to push us, to test us, to push borders, to see what we can do as Europeans.”
Changes in the Arctic mean new challenges for the NATO military alliance – including stepping up activity to deter threats, most of all from Russia.
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In Iceland, we toured a NATO airbase with the foreign secretary.
There, he said maintaining robust presence in the Arctic was essential for western security.
“Let’s be clear, in this challenging geopolitical moment the high north and the Arctic is a heavily contested arena and we should be under no doubt that NATO and the UK need to protect it for our own national security.”
Listen to The World with Richard Engel and Yalda Hakim every Wednesday
This is also about distracting Russia, drawing away resources that could have been used in the war in Ukraine and deterring it in the future.
Because the more Arctic opens up, the more this once pristine wilderness is becoming the arena of national rivalry and potentially conflict.
World
‘What did they do to be burned and bombed?’: Charity calls on UK to offer Gaza children life-saving treatment
A British charity has written to the prime minister and foreign secretary, urging them to allow seriously ill children from Gaza into the UK to receive life-saving medical treatment.
Warning: This article contains images readers may find distressing
The co-founder of Project Pure Hope told Sky News it was way past the time for words.
“Now, we need action,” Omar Dinn said.
He’s identified two children inside Gaza who urgently need help and is appealing to the UK government to issue visas as a matter of urgency.
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Britain has taken only two patients from Gaza for medical treatment in 20 months of Israeli bombardment.
Children are among the bulk of the casualties in Gaza
“Most of the people affected by this catastrophe that’s unfolding in Gaza are children,” he continued. “And children are the most vulnerable.
“They have nothing to do with the politics, and we really just need to see them for what they are.
“They are children, just like my children, just like everybody’s children in this country – and we have the ability to help them.”
Sky News has been sent video blogs from British surgeons working in Gaza right now which show the conditions and difficulties they’re working under.
They prepare for potential immediate evacuation whilst facing long lists, mainly of children, needing life-saving emergency treatment day after day.
Dr Victoria Rose is a British surgeon working in southern Gaza’s last remaining hospital
Dr Victoria Rose told us: “Every time I come, I say it’s really bad, but this is on a completely different scale now. It’s mass casualties. It’s utter carnage.
“We are incapable of getting through this volume. We don’t have the personnel. We don’t have the medical supplies. And we really don’t have the facilities.
“We are the last standing hospital in the south of Gaza. We really are on our knees now.”
One of her patients is three-year-old Hatem, who was badly burned when an Israeli airstrike hit the family apartment.
Karam, aged one, has a birth defect that could be easily fixed with surgery
His pregnant mother and father were both killed, leaving him an orphan. He has 35 percent burns on his small body.
“It’s a massive burn for a little guy like this,” Dr Rose says. “He’s so adorable. His eyelids are burnt. His hands are burnt. His feet are burnt.”
Hatem’s grandfather barely leaves his hospital bedside. Hatem Senior told us: “What did these children do wrong to suffer such injuries? To be burned and bombed? We ask God to grant them healing.”
Hatem Senior
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The second child identified by the charity is Karam, who, aged one, is trying to survive in a tent in deeply unhygienic surroundings with a protruding intestine.
He’s suffering from a birth defect called Hirschsprung disease, which could be easily operated on with the right skills and equipment – unavailable to him in Gaza right now.
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Karam, aged one, has a birth defect that could be easily fixed with surgery
Karam’s mother Manal told our Gaza camera crew: “No matter how much I describe how much my son is suffering, I wouldn’t be able to describe it enough. I swear I am constantly crying.”
Children are among the bulk of casualties – some 16,000 have been killed, according to the latest figures from local health officials – and make up the majority of those being operated on, according to the British surgical team on the ground.
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