The Quebec government has opened an investigation after a 24-year-old intellectually disabled woman with the mental capacity of a child was imprisoned in solitary confinement at the Leclerc Institution, a women’s prison, for eight days. The scandal was first broken by La Presse; the government professes to be “deeply shocked.”
Worse, however, was the reaction of Luc Ferrandez, former mayor of Le Plateau-Mont-Royal, and Nathalie Normandeau, former deputy premier of Quebec. According to the Coalition of Activists for Inclusion in Quebec (Regroupement des activistes pour l’inclusion au Québec) in a furious missive published on May 18, the two former politicians mused during a radio conversation that euthanasia might be the best “solution” to the woman’s situation.
“This week, on 98.5 FM, Luc Ferrandez and Nathalie Normandeau crossed a red line. Faced with the tragic situation of Florence [not her real name], a young woman with an intellectual disability who was imprisoned due to lack of adequate resources, these two former political figures turned commentator seriously considered—out loud—that the ‘solution’ might be…death.”
Indeed, Florence’s story should be a reminder that people with disabilities in Canada are faced with often insurmountable difficulties. CTV News reported that the young woman, who cannot read or write and sometimes has difficulty remembering her age, has a “unique condition” that “led to her fleeing her home repeatedly to find food” due to her Prader-Willi syndrome, which causes her to feel hungry all the time. Lawyer Kaven Morasse emphasized that Florence is in no way dangerous and is “very kind.”
Due to her condition, the young woman frequently left her private group home in search of food, and police became involved when she broke into neighbor’s houses. Florence was placed in the group home when her mother, who had cared for her for 22 years to the best of her ability, could no longer care for her.
Staff at the home, Morasse said, are not permitted to prevent those living there from leaving, and so Florence ended up cast adrift in the judicial system. No space was available at an appropriate institution, and so instead she was “ordered to be detained in a women’s prison and quickly wound up in solitary.”
Steven Laperrière, the manger at RAPLIQ and a signatory to the May 18 press release, told CTV that Florence’s treatment is indicative of systemic institutional failure. “I was ashamed that something like this happened in our Quebec, our country,” he said. “We need to do something, but jail is not the option. But everybody let that happen? What are we doing? What infuriates me is that it will happen again, because nobody is held accountable for actions like that.”
Quebec Social Services Minister Lionel Carmant and Public Safety Minister Francois Bonnardel also issued a statement. “It raises questions, and investigations will be conducted,” they said. “It is very clear that people living with intellectual disabilities have rights that must be respected at all times and that they require care adapted to their condition.”
The reaction of Ferrandez and Normandeau, however, is an indication that Canada’s “euthanasia mindset” is growing. Indeed, earlier this year the UN Committee on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities condemned Canada’s euthanasia regime in harsh terms for precisely this reason, with vice-chair Rosemary Kayess calling Track 2 MAiD a “step back into state-sponsored eugenics” and asking: “How is Track 2 MAiD not state-sponsored euthanasia?”
The UN committee called on Canada to repeal Track 2 MAiD precisely because of the threat it poses to people with disabilities—as was so chillingly highlighted by the response to Florence’s case. RAPLIQ’s response to these comments is worth quoting at length, as they convey the justifiable outrage that all Canadians should feel:
To speak of euthanasia with logistical calm, as if it were a measure of social efficiency, is to deny the value of different lives. It is to slip down a eugenic slope, the very same that has led history into the abyss.
This is not lucidity.
It is abdication.
It is abandonment disguised as reflection.
When a former mayor and a former minister consider that the morgue would be a “logical” outcome due to a lack of adequate public services, they relieve society of its moral, political, and human responsibility. They yield to the temptation of rejection, in the name of the comfort of the able-bodied.
Behind their pseudo-rational veneer, they opened a breach:
one that involves ranking lives, justifying the unjustifiable.
And we, at RAPLIQ, alongside thousands of disabled people and their families, say NO:
No to the trivialization of death as a “social solution.”
No to this false compassion that hides a deep contempt.
No to this morbid fantasy of liberation which is nothing but a shameful surrender.
Disability is part of the human condition.
It is not a virus to eradicate.
It is not a problem to be solved through erasure.
To reject disabled people is to reject one’s own humanity.
We choose, for Florence and for all the others:
Solidarity, not suppression.
Adaptation, not abandonment.
Dignity, not disappearance.
Quebec can do better. Quebec must do better.
Solutions exist — here and elsewhere. What’s lacking is courage.
We challenge Luc Ferrandez and Nathalie Normandeau to give RAPLIQ a voice on their show.
Not to shout. But to debate. Argue. Rehumanize.
They are precisely right. If we permit the calm discussion of a final solution for those with disabilities to pass unchallenged, we will allow those who advocate appear reasonable. We will allow them to move the Overton window. And eventually, we will allow this to happen. Indeed, it has already begun.
