Oh Canada

Canada has actually made it legal to die via medically assisted death and that's been something that's been legal since June 2016 via Bill C-14. In March of 2021, the law was amended by Bill C-7 that expanded the scope of situations that patients were allowed to choose euthanasia for. That is currently limited to persons who meet all the following criteria: they are at least 18 years old, are eligible for health services funded by the federal government, or province or territory, have a grievous and irremediable medical condition, make a voluntary request for medically assisted death (no outside pressure or influence) and have given informed consent to receive medically assisted suicide. In 2021, more than 10,000 people chose to die via medically assisted death in Canada.

The bill in March 2021 made it such that medically assisted death was applicable for those whose natural death would not be reasonably foreseeable. Meaning that a potential patient wouldn't need to have something like terminal cancer in order to apply for medically assisted death and could instead have some sort of disability that resulted in lower quality of life than they would like to have. You may have also noticed that you have to be a Canadian citizen to utilize the service, which was intentional. Canada wanted to prevent suicide tourism, so medically assisted death is only available to residents eligible for Canadian healthcare coverage. A work or education visa will not cut it in this case.

Why are we talking about this now? Well, it looks like Canada is making a plan to expand the law again and around March of 2023 the law will be updated to include mental illness. And of course, not everyone is happy about it. There are some who say that this service is harmful to those who have a disability, because if deemed "severe" enough a disabled person would qualify for the service. The moral issue here is that if that person with a disability who required any bit of assistance could potentially be convinced to use the medically assisted death program. At this time, it is not clear what the utilization rates look like, but we are sure that that data is being collected and will eventually be published in some fashion. Do other countries allow medically assisted death? Yes, this is actually something that is even allowed in some states in the US, but the programs are not as liberal as the one in Canada. Which is why Canada will probably be in the news again for euthanasia come March of 2023.

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