Ottawa ‘Still Evaluating’ Quebec’s Proposal to Approve Advance Requests for MAID

Health Minister Mark Holland makes an announcement on the Canadian Dental Care Plan at a dental office in Ottawa, on Aug. 7, 2024. The Canadian Press/Justin Tang

Health Minister Mark Holland said Ottawa is examining a proposal by the Quebec government to authorize certain early requests for Medical Assistance in Dying (MAiD) this fall.

“Quebec just announced their intention. I’ve had a number of conversations with different folks, different ministers in the government of Quebec, and what I’ve indicated is that we’re going to take a look at the proposal,” Holland told reporters on Sept. 9.

“We’re still evaluating it, because we’ve just received it, and it’s important that we have a conversation as a society about the implications of this.”

Beginning on Oct. 30, Quebec patients will be able to make advance requests for MAID before their medical conditions render them unable to give consent. Quebec first adopted a law in June 2023 that allowed MAID requests from individuals with serious and incurable diseases.

On Sept. 7, Quebec Justice Minister Simon Jolin-Barrette said in a statement that the government is taking “necessary steps” to ensure Quebecers can make advance requests for MAID.

Back in August, when the province announced it would authorize the early requests, Seniors Minister Sonia Bélanger said Quebec had been asking the federal government to modify the Criminal Code to make the requests, but that it would not “wait any longer.”

MAID in Canada

While MAID became legal in Canada back in June 2016, the law initially said that to be eligible for the procedure, one had to have a “grievous and irremediable medical condition” and natural death must be “reasonably foreseeable.” Bill C-7, passed in 2021, expanded eligibility by removing the requirement for the death to be reasonably foreseeable.

That bill excluded scenarios where mental illness was the only underlying medical condition, but that clause was set to expire on March 17, 2023. Ottawa passed bill C-39 on March 9, which postponed the eligibility of people with mental health conditions seeking MAID by a year.

On Jan. 19, the same day a joint parliamentary committee report recommended the expansion not go ahead, Holland announced Ottawa was once again extending the deadline. The same report recommended that Ottawa amend the Criminal Code to allow for advance MAID requests following a diagnosis of a serious and incurable medical condition.

A subsequent bill C-62, passed on Feb. 29, extended the eligibility date for persons suffering solely from a mental illness to March 17, 2027.

Canada’s MAID regime gained international attention in recent years after several Canadian Armed Forces (CAF) veterans said they were offered MAID without requesting it. This included CAF veteran and former Paralympian Christine Gauthier, who had been struggling for five years to have a wheelchair ramp installed at her home. She told a parliamentary committee in 2022 that she was offered MAID by a Veterans Affairs Canada employee, unprompted, while seeking help from the agency over supports.

According to the federal government’s Fourth Annual Report on MAID, the number of deaths via the procedure increased by 31.2 percent in 2022. The procedure accounted for 4.1 percent of all deaths in the country that year. There were 463 cases—3.5 percent of the total MAID deaths in 2022—in which the person’s natural death was not reasonably foreseeable.

The Canadian Press contributed to this report.