Man sentenced to house arrest after euthanizing disabled wife

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• By Sheila Gunn Reid

PETITION: Help Christine

Help injured veteran Christine Gauthier get her stair lift by shaming the VAC into doing its job.

4,575 signatures
Goal: 10,000 Signatures

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Francois Belzile, 75, was sentenced to a two-year conditional sentence after pleading guilty to manslaughter after injecting his 69-year-old wife with a fatal level of insulin in 2018.

Belzile, the solitary carer for his wife Christiane Belzile - a non-verbal stroke patient, attempted suicide after killing her.

We have a moral catastrophe of epic proportions when "caregiver burnout" becomes a legally acceptable excuse to murder the person in your care.

Shocking and terrifying.https://t.co/Ko6pXygIG5#abpoli #cdnpoli #euthanasia #DisabilityTwitter

— Amanda Achtman (@AmandaAchtman) March 21, 2023

Although the crown had asked for a sentence of four to six years of interaction, Belzile will serve his two-year sentence in the community, followed by another three years of probation.

In Canada, the medical assistance in dying protocol is proposed to be expanded to include the mentally ill.

The eligibility date for persons suffering solely from a mental illness has been postponed to March 17, 2024, after public outcry forced the Liberals to delay adopting the new rules by a year.

There's no resolution to the grief and mental anguish inflicted because a doctor killed your family member. #cdnpoli https://t.co/PKhZV9OfGi

— Amanda Achtman (@AmandaAchtman) March 11, 2023

One does not need to be terminally ill to access assisted suicide. Rather, those seeking help to die must "experience unbearable physical or mental suffering from your illness, disease, disability or state of decline that cannot be relieved under conditions that you consider acceptable."

Paraplegic army veteran Christine Gauthier has been denied a stairlift by veterans affairs for the last 5 years. She has to crawl up and down her stairs. Instead, she was offered assisted suicide.

It's time for the VAC to help her.

Sign the petition. https://t.co/hZtyEyui2i

— Sheila Gunn Reid (@SheilaGunnReid) February 7, 2023

Veterans Affairs has recently been scrutinized after staff across multiple jurisdictions offered MAID to veterans who called case workers in distress or for information.