A recent survey found most Canadians don’t support forcing religiously affiliated health-care facilities to provide medical assistance in dying (MAID).
Conducted by Angus Reid in partnership with Cardus, the poll found that three in five Canadians (58 percent) said patients wanting MAID should be transferred from religious facilities rather than forcing them to perform the service. Twenty-four percent said the facility should be forced to provide MAID.
The highest percentage of those who said patients should be transferred was in Manitoba (65 percent), followed by Saskatchewan (64), Ontario (62), and Alberta and Atlantic Canada both at 61 percent. Fifty-eight percent of those living in British Columbia supported transferring patients while Quebec came in last at 47 percent.
The survey follows a private member’s bill to stop the expansion of MAID to include those who suffer only from mental illness. Bill C-314 will be voted on in the House of Commons on Oct. 18.
The bill, put forward by Conservative MP Ed Fast, would amend the Canadian Criminal Code to state that a mental disorder “is not a grievous and irremediable medical condition for which a person could receive medical assistance in dying.”
MAID was expanded in March 2021 to allow those whose natural death is not “reasonably foreseeable” to access the service. Safeguards were included such as a 90-day assessment period, a second eligibility assessment by a professional with expertise in the condition the patient suffers from, and two clarifications of informed consent.
A Statistics Canada report released in February found that MAID procedures increased by 35 percent from 2020 to 2021, going from 7,446 to 10,029 deaths. In total, 3.3 percent of all deaths in Canada in 2021 were from MAID, up from 2.4 percent in 2020.
MAID expansion came under scrutiny in 2022 after Canadian Armed Forces veterans said they had been offered the procedure without them asking for it. One veteran told news media that he was offered MAID after seeking treatment for post-traumatic stress disorder and a traumatic brain injury.
The complaints led to a Veterans Affairs investigation and the publication of a report on “allegations of inappropriate conversations with veterans about medical assistance in dying.” The department said the incidents were the actions of a single employee who was later terminated.
The online survey was held from Sept. 19-22 with 1,872 adults who are members of Angus Reid Forums. A probability sample of this size would carry a margin of error of +/- 2 percentage points, 19 times out of 20.
