Case reference: MAID-ON-2023-RN8E · Bowmanville, Ontario · Applied for MAID; outcome not publicly known · Recorded by the register as a MAID victim
Who she is
Rose Finlay is a single mother of three boys in Bowmanville, Ontario, two of whom have disabilities themselves. She has used a wheelchair full-time since a diving accident at 17 left her quadriplegic. For most of her adult life she was fiercely self-sufficient. She ran her own disability advocacy business, Inclusive Solutions, which paid the bills and let her hire her own support workers. A photo she shared with CBC shows her smiling in the sun beside one of her sons.
She has lived in Durham Region, east of Toronto, for the better part of 17 years. “I fought the good fight,” she told Global News.
What happened
About a year before she went public, Finlay’s care workers moved on to other jobs. Without help, including help going to the bathroom, she began getting recurring urinary tract and kidney infections. “I’ve been very ill,” she told CBC. “I’ve been bedridden for the last year so my quality of life has significantly decreased.” Too sick to work, she lost her income.
Photo: Submitted by Rose Finlay, via CBC News (source)
She applied for the Ontario Disability Support Program (ODSP) and says a representative told her approval would take at least six to eight months. Facing the risk that her infections could turn into sepsis, she applied for medical assistance in dying in March 2023. In May 2023 she posted on Facebook: “There are only 50 days remaining on my MAiD application waiting period.” Diane Kluczynski, a woman who knew her, started a GoFundMe from that post, which raised more than $23,000. In June, a TikTok video in which Finlay counted down the “12 days left on my medical assistance in dying application” went viral, and her story was reported across Canada and abroad. She hoped the fundraiser would let her move her family to Toronto, where there are more disability services.
Why they were pushed toward MAID
Finlay has been clear about what pushed her toward MAID: not her disability, but the lack of support to live with it. “The waiting list for me to receive government disability support here is 6-8 months. A psychiatrist referral is 9 months… but it’s only 91 days for the government funded healthcare system to assist me in ending my life,” she wrote. “This is available to me because I’m a severely disabled person who currently has a decreased quality of life… because I have no support.”
“My life as it is, without support as a quadriplegic is far more deadly than me even exploring the MAID process,” she told Global News. Advocates backed her up. The ODSP Action Coalition told CBC it had heard from a number of Ontarians who had considered or applied for MAID because they felt they were running out of options. At the time ODSP paid a maximum of $1,228 a month.
In their own words
“It’s not what I want,” Finlay told CBC. “But if I don’t receive the support that I need, the outcome is the same.”
“That tells me that our government is not prioritizing the lives of disabled people and that it is easier to let disabled people go than it is to actually give them the assistance that they need,” she said. And in her Facebook post: “The government has created the perfect storm for disabled people here in Ontario. Starve them, cut them off from participating in society and then offer them death. This is not my Canada.”
She also made it clear she was still fighting: “I’m still actively fighting for my life and to be here with my kids. I couldn’t, in my right mind, just be okay with making the decision to not be here. I will fight until I can’t fight anymore.”
What this case shows
Rose Finlay was a working mother and advocate until she lost her care workers. After that, the system was set to process her request to die faster than her request for support to live. Her countdown is one of the clearest demonstrations of how Track 2 MAID interacts with slow, inadequate disability support: the fastest service on offer to a disabled mother was death.
Sources
- GoFundMe (organized by Diane Kluczynski, quoting Rose Finlay’s Facebook post): HELP NEEDED
- CBC News: Quadriplegic Ontario woman considers medically assisted dying because of long ODSP wait times
- Global News: Ontario quadriplegic mother applies for MAID over lack of access to disability supports
- National Post: Quadriplegic Ontario mother says her only option is assisted suicide due to lack of support
- Durham Radio News: Bowmanville woman says access to assisted dying is easier than access to disability supports
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