Canada launches ‘national consultation’ on ‘advance requests’ for euthanasia

CNA Staff, Dec 19, 2024 / 04:44 am

The Canadian government is actively soliciting citizen input for a proposal to legalize “advance requests” in which citizens can pre-arrange to be euthanized at a time when they are unable to consent to the procedure. 

The country’s federal government is inviting citizens to “share [their] thoughts” from December into February, soliciting input from “patients, health care providers,” Indigenous citizens, and “persons with lived experiences.” 

The move toward potentially allowing “advance requests” comes after the provincial government of Quebec implemented its own policy earlier this year. In that province, “advance requests” for medical aid in dying (MAiD) may be made by individuals who have “been diagnosed with a serious and incurable illness leading to incapacity” such as Alzheimer’s disease.

The request “must be made while the person is still capable of consenting to care,” the Quebec government said, acknowledging that the lethal procedure will be carried out “when they become incapable of [consenting].”

The Canadian federal government describes advance requests as a “complex and serious topic.” The results of the country’s “national conversation” on the matter will be published in a report next year, the government said. 

The “conversation,” the government said, will help to ensure the country’s euthanasia program “reflects the evolving needs of people in Canada,” “protects those who may be vulnerable” and “supports autonomy and freedom of choice.”

Alex Schadenberg, the executive director of the Ontario-based Euthanasia Prevention Coalition (EPC), wrote on Wednesday that “euthanasia by advance request is technically euthanasia without consent,” insofar as it is administered to individuals who cannot consent at the time.

“Once a person becomes incompetent, they are not legally able to change their mind, meaning that some other person will have the right to decide when the person dies, even if that person is happy with life,” he pointed out. 

The EPC is urging readers to use the group’s guide for completing the national consultation, one that argues in favor of the sanctity of life and which puts forth “strong opposition” to the country’s euthanasia law and its expansion. 

Euthanasia “was originally legalized in Canada under the guise of being limited to mentally competent adults, who are capable of consenting and who freely ‘choose’,” the group says on its blog. 

“Euthanasia by advanced request undermines these principles,” it says. 

Activists in Canada have regularly pushed to expand MAID since the law was first implemented in 2016. 

A group of pro-euthanasia advocates sued the federal government in August to allow physician-assisted suicide for those suffering from mental illness. 

The government earlier in the year paused a planned expansion of the MAID program that would have included the mentally ill, although it said it would consider the policy again in three years’ time in order to allow provinces to “prepare their health care systems” for the expansion.

Health Canada’s fifth annual medical assistance in dying (MAID) report, released last week, revealed that MAID accounted for nearly 1 in 20 deaths in the country last year.

Government statistics indicated that 15,343 people were euthanized by medical officials in Canada in 2023, out of a total of just under 20,000 requests. 

Those numbers represent “an increase of 15.8%” over 2022, the report says.