There is strong support for medical assistance in dying (MAID) in British Columbia, which has the highest per capita use of the program than the national average, recent polling and data shows.
According to Statistics Canada, of the 10,064 people who used MAID in 2021, 2,030 were from B.C., representing about 20 per cent of the total deaths while B.C. accounts for just 13.5 per cent of Canada’s population.
MAID was introduced in 2016 for those with "reasonably foreseeable" deaths. In 2021, however, the law changed to include individuals whose death is not reasonably foreseeable, after the Superior Court of Quebec struck down the original law, to include the likes of mental illness as a sole condition. This month, the federal government delayed implementing those changes until March 2024.
Across Canada, 82 per cent support MAID, to some degree, including appropriate checks and balances for mentally ill people, according to an Ipsos poll conducted on behalf of Dying With Dignity Canada in January 2023. In B.C., the support rises to 86 per cent, polling shows.
“Canadians support the notion that with the appropriate safeguards in place, an adult with the capacity to provide informed consent should be able to seek an assessment for medical assistance in dying for a severe, treatment-resistant mental disorder for which they experience intolerable suffering,” stated Ipsos.
Support was divided into “strongly agree” and “somewhat agree” and B.C. respondents showed the highest provincial rate of strong support, at 42 per cent. Only Quebec had greater overall support than B.C., at 91 per cent.
However, an Angus Reid Institute poll, not conducted on behalf of a special interest group, showed less support for MAID (61 per cent, with 28 per cent opposed) in its current form and even less support should it include mental illness as the sole condition (31 per cent support).
More than half of Canadians (55 per cent) told Angus Reid Institute they worry about MAID taking the place of improvements in social service.
A Statistics Canada report published Feb.13 shows there were 12,689 written requests for MAID in 2021, a 31 per cent uptick from 2020.
In 2016, when MAID was introduced, there were only 1,018 deaths. The six-year total stands at 31,664. MAID deaths accounted for 3.3 per cent of all deaths in Canada in 2021, an increase from 2.5 per cent in 2020 and two per cent in 2019, according to Statistics Canada. B.C. is the province with the highest rate of MAID deaths, at 4.8 per cent, in 2021.
“The rise in medically assisted deaths may partly be explained by a greater awareness of MAID as an end-of-life option in Canada. This increase has led to more demand for medical practitioners (physicians or nurse practitioners) who provide MAID. There was an increase of 17.2 per cent in the number of MAID practitioners in 2021 (1,577) compared with 2020 (1,345),” stated the report.
Of the 2,625 MAID applications that never resulted in a death, 1,865 were due to the fact the person died of another cause prior to receiving MAID.
There were 523 Canadians whose requests were deemed to be ineligible for MAID because they either lacked the capacity to make decisions regarding their health or did not meet the criteria of having a serious and incurable illness, disease or disability, the federal data collector stated.
About two in 100 applicants withdrew their request, most of whom changed their mind because they felt palliative care measures were sufficient.
