A doctor prepares a syringe with “Thiopental” a barbiturate that is used in the practice of euthanasia in a hospital in Belgium, on February 1, 2024. In 2022 (Photo by Simon Wohlfahrt / AFP)
Canadians with disabilities are being offered medical assistance in dying (MAID) when accessing health care for regular health concerns, a disabilities advocate told a parliamentary committee on Oct. 8.
“People with disabilities are now very much afraid in many circumstances to show up in the health care system with regular health concerns, because often MAID is suggested as a solution to what is considered to be intolerable suffering,” Krista Carr, CEO of Inclusion Canada, told the Parliamentary Finance Committee on Oct. 8.
When asked for more details by Conservative MP Garnett Genuis, Carr said she hears complaints “weekly,” and the disability community wants the repeal of Track 2 MAID, which applies to people whose natural death is not reasonably foreseeable.
Genuis said he agrees with Carr, but that, “taking action in Parliament is a bit like building a house on a desert island—you have to build with what has washed ashore.”
The Conservative Party has been critical of Canada’s euthanasia program, which is among the most liberalized in the world. The Liberal government introduced MAID in 2016 after a Supreme Court ruling found that the absence of such a program violated the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. The program has since been expanded and is set to include individuals with mental health conditions by 2027.
The program drew further controversy in 2022 when military veterans said they had been offered MAID by a Veterans Affairs Canada (VAC) agent after approaching the department for support. VAC responded by saying all the incidents involved one agent who “is no longer employed with the Department.”
There have also been cases of individuals seeking MAID due to financial hardship, including a 54-year-old man in St. Catharines who suffered from chronic back pain and feared becoming homeless in 2022. He applied for MAID but changed his mind after receiving community support.
MAID Expansion
While Canada’s MAID regime was set to be expanded on March 17, 2023, to include people whose sole medical condition is mental illness, Ottawa introduced Bill C-39 to extend the date to March 17, 2024. Then, in February 2024, Ottawa introduced legislation that again extended the deadline to give more preparation time for medical providers and provinces.
The government said that after consultations with the provinces, territories, medical professionals, and other stakeholders, it concluded that the “health system is not yet ready for this expansion.”
In October 2024, then-Health Minister Mark Holland said Ottawa had always chosen a “cautious approach” to expanding MAID eligibility, and that it was launching consultations with provinces, territories, and other stakeholders. The government has said Health Canada will publish a report on the key findings from those consultations in fall 2025.
The Fifth Annual Report on Medical Assistance in Dying in Canada found that in 2023, 21.1 percent of Canadians who sought MAID in the Track 1 category, where their natural deaths were “reasonably foreseeable,” cited loneliness or isolation as a reason for seeking MAID. For Track 2, that number was 47.1 percent.
Matthew Horwood is a reporter based in Ottawa.