A severely disabled Canadian signed up for a government euthanasia program amid fears he would be evicted from public housing, only to reconsider when strangers online helped him raise more than 60,000 $.

After an accident a few years ago, Amir Farsoud, 54, lives in St Catharines, Ontario, suffers from debilitating back pain and depends on government payments for food and shelter. He often found himself with only $7 a day for food.

In October, when the boarding house where he lives with two housemates went up for sale, he feared losing his home and not being able to find a new one for years. So he signed up for Canada’s controversial MAID medical assistance in dying program for terminally ill people. sick. and debilitating disabilities.

His reasoning was that he would be unable to survive being homeless, so even if he did not wish to die, he would prefer a dignified death at a time of his choosing rather than a slow death on the street.

After Farsoud’s story made headlines across Canada, strangers set up a GoFundMe page for him, which collectively funded over $60,000 and allowed him to return to safe housing while awaiting a new placement in social work.

“We Need Humanity to Win,” Fundraising Page Organizer he wrote🇧🇷 “We are all in this life together and as Canadians we have to help. If the last 3 years have taught us anything, it’s that without compassion, resilience, community and good health, we are nothing.

Farsoud, an Iranian immigrant who left the country at age 12 with his family to flee the revolution, says CityNews the generosity of many other Iranian immigrants, as well as many anonymous donors online, gave him another chance.

“I felt that once in my life. When we left Iran and arrived in France, we got off the plane and I was a kid, but I fell on my knees and kissed track, because no one was going to shoot me, no protests, no army, no burning buildings. I’ll wake up in the morning knowing that I wouldn’t be dead that night,” he said. he declared. “The way I feel or have felt since this happened is the closest I’ve come [to that]🇧🇷

The money allowed him to pay off $20,000 in loans and debts and add another $800 a month to disability benefits for the next few years while he waits for a new home.

“Basically, as long as I have enough that I don’t go hungry and worry about how many months or years I’m on the waiting list for permanent, stable, affordable housing. That’s all I ever wanted,” he added in his CityNews interview. “People in my place don’t want fancy lifestyles, we just want to keep going.”

Farsoud said he knows other people using Ontario’s Disability Support Payments program who have struggled with similar issues living on $1,200 a month.

Canada’s MAID program began in 2016 for people facing foreseeable and unavoidable death, and expanded this year to people living with disability or debilitating pain, even if their life is not in danger.

By 2021, the UN published a report on such programs have argued that these “end-of-life interventions are standardized for people who are not terminally ill or suffering at the end of their life, these legislative provisions tend to be based on – or draw their strength – from enabling assumptions about the ‘quality of life’ or ‘value’ inherent in the life of a person with a disability. »