Man applies for euthanasia because he doesn’t want to be homeless
Topics: Canada
Callum Jones
Featured Image Credit: Sabina Radu / Phanie / Alamy Stock Photo
Topics: Canada
A man from Canada has applied for euthanasia because he doesn't want to be homeless.
54-year-old Amir Farsoud is applying to end his own life under Canada's regressive euthanasia framework.
Farsoud, who lives in in St Catharines, near Niagara Falls, is in constant pain sustained by a back injury, describing his quality of life as 'awful, non-existent and terrible … I do nothing other than manage pain'.
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However, in an interview with local broadcaster City News, he said it would be bearable if he had somewhere to stay.
Farsoud lives in a shared accommodation, but the owner has placed the house on the market.
For that rent, the 54-year-old relies on social assistance and says he can't find affordable accommodation.
He said: "I don’t want to die but I don’t want to be homeless more than I don’t want to die.
"I know, in my present health condition, I wouldn’t survive it anyway. It wouldn’t be at all dignified waiting, so if that becomes my two options, it’s pretty much a no-brainer."
Farsoud was then asked if he would consider applying for assisted suicide if he had a stable housing situation.
He said he wouldn't 'even be close yet', adding: "It would be on my radar because my physical condition is only going to get worse.
"At that point, I would be probably availing myself of the option, but that would be presumably years down the road. "
Just last year, UN experts warned that Canada's euthanasia law seems to violate the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
Before the country's law was passed, the UN warned: "It is not beyond possibility that, if offered an expanded right persons with disabilities may decide to end their lives because of broader social factors".
Cases like Farsoud's are increasing across Canada, according to a bioethicist from the University of Toronto.
Dr Kerry Bowman also told City News: "Cases like [Farsoud’s] are emerging with increasing frequency across the country.
"We were unbelievably naive as a nation to think that vulnerability, disability, poverty [was something] that we could parcel that off and it wasn’t going to be a problem.
"I worry about this because it is people living with disability, people living with pain, people living in poverty, that are requesting medical assistance in dying, not because of the physical experience they’re going through, but because of the social circumstances themselves and this is wrong. It’s really a very terrible thing."