As we mark 10 years of MAiD in Canada, we wait in hope for good news. The National Post reports that the special parliamentary committee on MAiD is expected to recommend an indefinite pause on MAiD for mental illness when it tables its report. The government has indicated it will follow the committee’s recommendation.
The committee’s report will be tabled tomorrow — 10 years to the day since the first law allowing medical assistance in dying, or MAiD, was passed.
We invite you to pause, reflect and pray tomorrow as we think about a decade of MAiD in Canada. What have we learned in the decade since Canada passed a law allowing euthanasia and assisted suicide? How might God be calling us to respond?
Why has this change been so significant?
It shifts our medical system away from a presumption for life. With MAiD, a doctor or nurse practitioner intentionally ends the life of the patient by administering a lethal substance. Canadian law also allows a person to be prescribed a lethal substance and take it themselves, but that option is very rarely taken.
MAiD communicates that some lives aren’t worth living. A young and healthy person may be directed to suicide prevention. Others may not.
What have we learned in the past decade?
The law is far more subjective than many realize. The assessing doctors decide what a “serious” illness, disease or disability is. The doctors also assess when a patient’s death is “reasonably foreseeable” – whether that might mean days, months or years – in which case there are fewer safeguards.
There is less oversight than was expected. Safeguard failures have been documented. A review committee set up by Ontario’s Chief Coroner describes troubling approvals. Two daughters devastated by their mother’s death by MAiD in the midst of a mental health crisis describe the difficulty of obtaining her medical records and confirming whether her death was in compliance with the law.
It is primarily existential suffering that drives decisions for MAiD. When the first MAiD law was being debated, the public discussion was about a person in the last days of life experiencing unrelenting pain. The sources of suffering reported by MAiD recipients are listed in the government’s annual reports on MAiD. Commonly cited reasons include an inability to participate in meaningful activities, feeling like a burden, loneliness/isolation. While pain and symptoms are listed by approximately half of people who have died by MAiD, those options include fear of pain or symptoms.
The impact on people in vulnerable moments. A person may be eligible for MAiD because of an illness, but they may choose MAiD because of their socioeconomic circumstances. Media reports describe people applying for MAiD because they are losing their housing or their finances are running out. Or because they aren’t able to access the care and support they need to live.
MAiD is increasingly normalized and widespread. Initially expected to be a rare, last resort for Canadians, MAiD accounted for 5% of all deaths in 2024. Legal safeguards require only that a person be informed of ways to alleviate their suffering, not that all reasonable means have been tried.
How can we respond?
Pray. Take some time tomorrow to pray – alone or with a friend, in a small group or prayer meeting. We can pray for our country and those around us. We can ask God to show us how to reach out and offer support to those around who are struggling. And we can ask Him to give us strength for all our days, to face our own diminishing capacity, and to run the race well. Prayer is foundational.
Reflect. How can we communicate to people that they are loved, that their lives are valued, that they matter? Purpose, value, hope and community are a vital part of our life together as Christians. How can we can show the love of Christ to each other and to our neighbours in practical, tangible ways? Consider making the Declare and Resolve commitment with your small group or congregation, and how you might carry out those commitments.
Engage in civic life. It matters which laws are passed. One of the ways we love our neighbours is to ask for laws that protect and support them. We can ask MPs to support an indefinite pause on MAiD for mental illness, if not a complete repeal of the expansion. Continue to ask your MP to support Bill C-218, which is now expected to come up for debate in late September after Parliament’s summer recess.