2. Introdution: What was the Purpose of this Project >>
Executive Summary

The intent of the “Will to Live” Template Project was to look carefully at the threat people with disabilities have perceived for themselves with regards to their own medical care, and to explore one of several options that could help alleviate that threat. The development of a “Will to Live” is just such an option.

Health care for anyone in Manitoba is often less than optimal; but for able-bodied persons, the cause for this is, at times, mainly due to the transitions and complications that have occurred over the last few years in our health care bureaucracy.

People with disabilities face something more insidious. Sometimes, what threatens them most is not necessarily their medical conditions, but the withholding of treatment for those conditions because the prevailing societal attitudes devalue the quality of their lives.

The section of the report following this summary examines some of the historical events (much of them within the last decade) which demonstrate why it is so important for people with disabilities to be aware of their rights, and to lobby for further protection. The next chapter of the report looks at the research methodology which helped the Manitoba League of Persons with Disabilities both convey information to, and learn from, its membership and other citizens in the province. The fourth chapter describes the findings of this project, whether it be through researching what is happening on a national and international scale, which convey the concerns, frustrations, fears and joys of people in this province. Included in this section are a legal analysis of patients’ rights, and the role a “Will to Live” could play if such a document were developed. The conclusion of this report contains a sample of what a “Will to Live” might look like. This was developed with the input from the focus groups and survey respondents. Finally, a list of recommendations is put forward to guide future ways of addressing patients’ rights and right-to-life issues for Manitobans with disabilities.

It is critically important to recognize that the “Will to Live” issue is a complex one. There were many matters that were unresolved at the completion of this project. Not included in this paper are references to some of the cross-cultural elements that influence the ways Canadians think about end-of-life issues such as various ethnic conceptualizations of illness, health care and death. The paper also does not describe different social understandings of what constitutes a “family” and who would be a relevant patient proxy.^[1] The sample of the “Will to Live” template itself is far from being a legally binding document. Much more fine-tuning needs to occur, with input from the medical and legal communities, along with continual interfacing with people with disabilities. It is clear that public education has to occur at multiple levels, including with those involved in administering health care, the law, those within and those who are not part of an organized community of persons with disabilities, and the general public.

Both the Manitoba League of Persons with Disabilities and the Council of Canadians with Disabilities are well established organizations with a long history of advocacy and volunteer committees which have made a commitment to this issue. These organizations have the capacity to undertake the next stages of the work needed in order to take the “Will to Live” idea from its conceptual stage and move it into practice. The intention is to have a “Will to Live” template become a tool that is readily available to persons with disabilities at the grassroots level across Canada.

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1	This is covered, to some extent, in the previous MLPD paper, Our Last Rights: Do Not Resuscitate (DNR) Orders and People with Disabilities. MLPD: October, 2000.

2. Introdution: What was the Purpose of this Project >>


The Will To Live Template Project - Contents