A lead campaigner for Canada’s euthanasia programme may have chosen to live if adequate care had been available, according to reports.
Jean Truchon, who had cerebral palsy, was one of the key figures in campaigning to expand the scope of euthanasia and assisted suicide legislation in Canada in 2019 so that the law did not only apply to people whose death was ‘reasonably foreseeable’. Following his successful legal challenge in Quebec, in 2021, the Canadian Parliament ultimately repealed the requirement that the natural death of those applying for euthanasia or assisted suicide be “reasonably foreseeable”.
After Truchon’s life was ended by euthanasia in 2020 aged 51, he was praised for his contribution to the assisted suicide debate by François Legault, the Premier of Quebec, and then-Health Minister Danielle McCann.
However, in a 2016 email seen by The Telegraph, Truchon suggested he may not have wished to die at all if he had been able to access better care.
“In response to your question regarding home care, I think that indeed if there were services for 70 hours or more, I would have preferred to stay at home and possibly I would not have had the same desire to die”, he said in a letter transcribed by his psychologist.