Health Canada has revealed its final regulations for a national system for monitoring medical assistance in dying (MAID).
Announced on Thursday, the regulations, which will come into force on November 1, outline what information needs to be reported to the federal government after a clinician receives a request for medical assistance in dying. The regulations also require Health Canada to release at least once a year a public report based on the data that is collected.
Since the legalization of assisted dying in June 2016, methods for collecting information about MAID have differed from one province or territory to the next. The implementation of this national monitoring system is intended to “provide Canadians with a clear picture of how the legislation is working across the country, and create consistent data sets among jurisdictions and regions,” Health Canada said in a statement explaining the regulations.
Dying With Dignity Canada is strongly supportive of the creation of a national system for monitoring medical assistance in dying and provided feedback on a draft version of the regulations earlier this year. A number of DWDC’s recommendations were reflected in the final regulations.
“Our objective is to support the creation of a MAID monitoring system that helps protect vulnerable Canadians, promotes transparency, and improves our collective understanding of how the MAID rules are being applied, without imposing an undue burden on suffering patients and the clinicians who are responsible for their care,” we wrote in our Feb. 2018 submission to Health Canada.
“When it comes to all rules and regulations for MAID, the person — the vulnerable patient whose rights and interests are most at stake — must come first.”
Though Dying With Dignity Canada is supportive of many of the changes that have been made, the organization is calling on Health Canada to review the regulations every six months, to ensure that they don’t deter clinicians from participating in the legal provision of assisted dying.
“If the reporting requirements make it more difficult for eligible people to find a clinician who can help alleviate their suffering,” said DWDC CEO Shanaaz Gokool, “then the monitoring system will have failed the objective of protecting Canadians’ rights.”
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Facebook TwitterI do personally know people with very serious chronic illnesses: 1) A woman in her late 70s with relapsing-remitting MS (she is also a cancer survivor) who must use a walker and finds riding in or driving a car for more than an hour very painful. 2) A dear friend (also a cancer survivor) who may lose her life prematurely due to a liver ailment. 3) Another person with rheumatoid arthritis in her early 60s. She would love to retire early, but must continue working until 65 for her maximum pension. (Her husband is my husband’s long-term care center.) All three not only oppose assisted suicide/MAID, but believe it to be immoral, if not evil. Could mention others, but you get the picture.
Personally, I have already lost about 20% of the hearing in one of my ears and will likely need hearing aids for both ears. No biggie. ENT doctor says I’ll be a great candidate for them and while being far from wealthy, I’ll being able to afford them. If/when they no longer do the trick, our Medicare system will pay for a cochlear implant for one ear. Way before then, I’ll learn sign language and lip reading. (Better to be prepared for the worst.) And perhaps medical technology may have something even better in store by then.
Jeannie,
I have enjoyed our discussion. You, I, and R. Cormier have disagreed without being disagreaable. In the US, given our current political climate, that’s sometimes difficult to see happen.
God bless us all when we face the final chapter in our lives, whenever that occurs. We’ll need it.
In Washington and Oregon, nearly all people requesting a medically-assisted death cite do not severe, unremitting pain or fear of severe, unremitting pain as one of their reasons for its necessity. Most methods of refusing medical treatment can be managed without severe pain. One of my aunts refused dialysis as did my husband’s first roommate in long-term care. Their deaths were not long and drawn-out and they did not suffer. They also had the opportunities to say their good-byes. Why would this not be the case with other means of refusing treatment?
If pain can be managed (and it almost always can), where is it written that is undignified to be bedridden, incontinent, and/or require assistance with bathing, dressing, eating or other activities of daily living near the end of life? It did not used to be this way. This social construct deserves close examination. It bears no resemblance to the truth unless if we choose to make it so. It is a choice, not the truth, like 2 + 2 = 4, the Earth revolving around the Sun, the existence of gravity, or the germ theory of disease.
Refusing cancer treatment, stopping eating and drinking, refusing dialysis, not inserting pacemakers, etc: Slow, painful deaths after prolonged suffering and loss of dignity.
MAID: Peaceful, painless, dignified and quick, with a chance to prepare and say goodbye to family and friends.
I know which I’d choose.
I do not live in la-la land by any means. Yes, I know people with low incomes, poor or no health insurance (I volunteer with an organization that helps them obtain Ohio Medicaid, among other benefits, if they qualify), and poor health. I have friends with cancer and those who are cancer survivors. I have survived a brush with death and seriously considering suicide (more than once). My own dear husband will likely die of complications of frontotemporal degeneration, a form of dementia. My late father died of complications of Alzheimer’s and my mother-in-law has this awful illness now. Only one of the people with whom I have a relationship has expressed any interest in a medically-assisted death. (And most don’t know of my opposition to it.)
Allowing people to end their lives prematurely because of lack of good health care or cures for all illnesses solves no problems. Will it lead to increases in health care funding or medical research? Has it done so in countries or states where it has been legal for many years? Show us the money.
No civilized nation requires anyone to submit subject to any medical treatment he/she does not want. DNR/DNI orders, not inserting pacemakers, refusing dialysis, refusing cancer treatment…there are endless ways to hasten death. (See it happen all the time at my husband’s long-term care center. I even have to give permission for my husband to have an annual flu shot!) Suicide is not illegal, nor should it be. It’s perfectly legal to stop eating and drinking as a way to die, too. There’s no need to involve the medical community.
Lest you think we are all islands, totally autonomous, think again. Ask anyone who works at a mental health center what a suicide does to those around them. It is devastating. It would not be surprising if there are silent sufferers of MAID deaths of their loved ones and friends, afraid to speak out because it has become politically incorrect to do so.
Yes, your Supreme Court has legalized MAID. Well, our Supreme Court has made unwise decisions in the past, too…like saying that segregated public schools were legal as long as they were “separate but equal”. Thankfully, they realized how wrong they were. And thankful that our Supreme Court has ruled that there is no fundamental right to assisted suicide here in the US. Each state decides on their own. Would every province in Canada legalize MAID if given that option? Food for thought.
Not to mention that current medical knowledge and technology simply aren’t capable of curing all ills.
We’ll have to agree to disagree. Not that committing suicide when one gives up hope in the face of an incurable illness is anything but tragic. Or that inadequate health care resources may frustrate a patient to the point that ending his or her life prematurely via MAID is a good thing. Don’t mean to be flippant about such serious things. Yes, we live in a very, very imperfect world. Perhaps I’m too optimistic, but I’d rather not throw in the towel that easily when it comes to human life. Can do very little, if anything, but as someone said, “Better to light one candle, than to curse the darkness.” Stop talking and get off butt and do something…anything.
-regardless of the state of health care/supports at the time of choice.Unfortunately for many people, they have incurable illnesses that while the illness will not kill them anytime soon, it makes living hell on Earth. All the money in the world cannot cure the incurable. 12 years ago a friend of mine killed himself because he had no hope. Sometimes a medical condition that causes great suffering just cannot be cured or alleviated. My friend overdosed on his medication and died horribly. Until we develop medicine that can do miracles and the impossible, medically assisted death is the only humane option, and needs to be easily accessible to everyone suffering from incurable illness who is suffering as a result of it.
I think the ultimate goal should be to provide those suffering intolerably, with full relief, whatever form that takes. If we suddenly develop Star-Trek-era health-care that can fix anything, then that would be great. Sadly, we are far from that, and so the best we can do is offer an escape from the suffering.
What about improving the health care system instead of making it easier to qualify for a medically-assisted death? Shouldn’t that be the ultimate goal?
The Canadian government needs to see these people in their suffering and hear people’s life stories because they are too stupid and ignorant to understand what it is like to live and know the huge gaping holes in the Canadian medical system!
Unless this new data is evaluated and utilized in better legislation and procedures, it will wasted.
As for Schedule 3 (i), ALL patient’s deaths are naturally foreseeable. I may not die for another 10 – 40 years, but I can guarantee you 100% that I will be dead in 50. That’s not just reasonably foreseeable, it’s ABSOLUTE CERTAINTY.