In a high-profile case involving Fraser Health last year, a 61-year-old mentally ill man named Alan Nichols died by voluntary euthanasia at a British Columbia hospital in 2019. His family did not support the decision, and were unable to stop it from being carried out. They doubt Nichols was able to give informed consent to his euthanization, and maintain his natural death was not reasonably foreseeable.
The number of Canadians killed by physician-assisted suicide nearly doubled between 2017 and 2019, according to a 2020 report released by the Canadian government.
In 2019, a total of 5,631 Canadians ended their lives through MAID. This amounts for 2% of the total deaths in Canada, an increase from 2018, when MAID deaths accounted for 1.12% of the total deaths in Canada.
In U.S. states with legal physician-assisted suicide, less than 0.5% of deaths are due to euthanasia, the lowest rate in the world. If Canada’s numbers were extrapolated to the United States, approximately 50,000 people each year would end their lives with MAID. This would put euthanasia in the top 10 causes of death for the United States, just above “intentional self-harm (suicide)” and just below kidney disease.
The report found that cancer was the most common condition among those who ended their lives with MAID, followed by respiratory conditions and neurological ailments. Slightly over two thirds of those who used MAID had cancer as an underlying condition.
In 2019, Quebec’s Supreme Court ruled that requiring death to be “reasonably foreseeable” in assisted suicide cases was unconstitutional. The court said the government must update its laws to reflect this ruling by Feb. 26, 2021.
In response, the federal government introduced Bill C-7, which would remove a reasonably foreseeable death from the criteria necessary to qualify for legal assisted suicide. The law would still prohibit assisted suicide for patients who have only mental illnesses and not physical illnesses.
The bill passed through the House of Commons by a two-to-one margin on December 10. It still needs the approval of the Senate, however the government is required by Feb. 26 to bring federal law on assisted suicide in line with the Quebec Superior Court’s 2019 ruling that requiring death to be “reasonably foreseeable” for assisted suicide is unconstitutional.
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