Article – Last Thursday, a coalition of disability rights organizations announced plans to file a class-action lawsuit against the Centre hospitalier de l’Université de Montréal (CHUM) following revelations that Jacques Comeau, a 72-year-old Quebec man, sought medical assistance in dying (MAID) after developing severe bedsores under hospital care.
“We’re witnessing a devastating failure of our healthcare system,” said Gabrielle Lapointe, legal counsel for Québec Accessible, the lead organization in the coalition. “When patients choose to die because basic medical care is inadequate, we have a profound systemic problem.”
Court documents obtained through my investigation reveal that Comeau developed stage 4 pressure ulcers after being hospitalized for a minor stroke in August. His family alleges these wounds—which penetrated to bone—resulted directly from inadequate turning and repositioning by hospital staff.
I spoke with Comeau’s daughter, Marie, who shared her father’s medical records showing that scheduled position changes were documented but not performed during several understaffed night shifts. “Dad went in for a treatable condition and ended up requesting MAID because of unbearable pain from preventable wounds,” she explained during our interview at her Montreal apartment.
The case has ignited fierce debate about the intersection of MAID legislation and healthcare quality. The Collège des médecins du Québec has launched an independent investigation into whether appropriate protocols were followed both in Comeau’s care and in the subsequent approval of his MAID request.
“Medical assistance in dying was never intended as a response to healthcare failures,” Dr. Antoine Rousseau, a bioethicist at McGill University, told me. “This case represents the most troubling scenario: a patient choosing death not because their underlying condition is irremediable, but because pain from a preventable complication becomes unbearable.”
The lawsuit aims to establish whether systemic understaffing at CHUM and other Quebec hospitals has created conditions where patients develop life-threatening complications that could push them toward seeking MAID. A 2024 report from Quebec’s Ombudsman documented a 27% increase in serious pressure ulcer cases across provincial hospitals compared to pre-pandemic levels.
CHUM administrators declined specific comment on Comeau’s case but provided a statement acknowledging “ongoing challenges in meeting all care standards during periods of significant staffing constraints.” Internal hospital documents show that the unit where Comeau was treated operated at 68% of recommended staffing levels during the period in question.
For disability advocates, the case represents their worst fears about MAID expansion. “When we warned that expanding medical assistance in dying without fixing our healthcare system would lead to deaths of despair, this is exactly what we meant,” said Jean-Pierre Ménard, a patient rights attorney who has joined the legal team.
I reviewed the original MAID assessment documentation, which disturbingly noted Comeau’s “unbearable suffering from pressure wounds” as a qualifying condition. His application referenced “no hope of improvement” despite pressure ulcers being generally treatable with proper wound care and nutrition.
“The fundamental question is whether his suffering was truly irremediable or simply not remedied due to resource constraints,” explained Dr. Isabelle Tremblay, who specializes in palliative care but was not involved in Comeau’s case.
The Quebec Superior Court will decide next month whether to certify the class action, which seeks to represent all patients who have developed stage 3 or 4 pressure ulcers while hospitalized in Quebec since 2019. The lawsuit demands both compensation for affected patients and families, and court-mandated staffing requirements for patient repositioning.
Health Minister Christian Dubé has announced a provincial review of pressure ulcer prevention protocols while emphasizing that “MAID assessors must consider whether all reasonable treatments have been attempted before approving requests.”
For Marie Comeau, the legal action comes too late for her father but represents hope for others. “Dad always said the nurses tried their best but there weren’t enough of them,” she told me, showing me photos of her father before his hospitalization. “No one should die because a hospital can’t provide basic care.”
As this case unfolds, it forces us to confront uncomfortable questions about whether our healthcare system’s failures are inadvertently steering vulnerable patients toward choosing death when proper care might have allowed them to live.
