A nurse holds the hand of a patient in the palliative care unit in a hospital on the French Mediterranean island of Corsica, in a file photo. (Pascal Pochart-Casabianca/AFP via Getty Images)
“We’re now no longer dealing with an exceptional treatment, but a treatment that is very frequent,” Dr. Michel Bureau, head of Quebec’s commission on end-of-life care, told The Canadian Press in a recent interview.
Dr. Bureau said Quebec is on track to finish the year with 7 percent of all deaths recorded under MAiD.
“That’s more than anywhere else in the world—4.5 times more than Switzerland, three times more than Belgium, more than the Netherlands. It’s two times more than Ontario,” he said.
Use of MAiD has risen sharply since Quebec passed its own legislation in 2016—separate from federal legislation passed around the same time. According to the most recent Health Canada data for 2021, Quebec’s use of MAiD increased 44 percent year-over-year, compared to about 32 percent nationally.
A total of 9,741 Quebecers have died by MAiD since 2016. In 2016, there were 494 MAiD deaths in the province. In 2021, there were 3,281.
‘Major Abuses’
In June, the Quebec National Assembly passed Bill 11, a new law that mandates palliative care facilities to offer MAiD. The bill, tabled by Sonia Bélanger, the province’s minister responsible for health and seniors, received near-unanimous support in a free vote in February.
Bill 11 withdraws the end-of-life criterion for MAiD and allows persons suffering from a serious and incurable illness leading to incapacity to make an advance request for the procedure. However, it does specify that a mental disorder is not an illness.
The bill also extends eligibility to people who have a “severe physical impairment resulting in a significant and persistent disability.”
In addition, it facilitates specialized nurse practitioners to administer continuous palliative sedation and medical aid in dying. It also allows nurses to establish that a death has occurred and fill out a death certificate.
The new law has drawn criticism from euthanasia opponents, with one University of Ottawa assistant professor saying it “opens the door to major abuses, with very few solid guidelines to prevent them.”
Dr. Bureau said he witnessed a slight increase in the number of cases that violate Quebec’s end-of-life legislation. Of the 15 cases mentioned in the commission’s last annual report, three included patients who were unable to consent.
Lee Harding, Tara MacIsaac, and The Canadian Press contributed to this report.