_Gollum_
Formerly Alexei_Kirillov
- Mar 9, 2024
- 1,686
Gutting. To me the fact that MAID wasn't available to everyone yesterday is a moral abomination. So messed up. (With the caveat of course that the pause hasn't been confirmed yet and there's still a chance it could go the other way).
www.theglobeandmail.com
The federal government is prepared to table legislation that would pause the expansion of medical assistance in dying to people whose sole condition is mental illness if a parliamentary committee that is studying the issue recommends it, three sources told The Globe and Mail. The government expects that the committee will make such a recommendation based on evidence presented in hearings and questions from MPs over the past two months, the sources said. The committee was hearing its final witnesses on Tuesday. It will write a report, with its recommendations, to be tabled in the weeks or months ahead.
The government opened up MAID to people who were not facing imminent death in 2021, but the legislation carved out a temporary exclusion for mental illness. This meant people without physical ailments were still unable to qualify for assisted death. That exemption was extended twice by former prime minister Justin Trudeau and is currently set to end in March of next year. Mark Carney has not spoken about the issue, but the Prime Minister has been under pressure, including from religious figures and disability advocates, to delay it further – or scrap it altogether.
The committee has heard from physicians and Health Canada officials that the country may not be ready to move ahead, that the health care system isn't ready for the expansion and that determining eligibility would be complex. The parliamentary committee's co-chairs, Liberal MP Marcus Powlowski and Conservative Senator Yonah Martin, have both previously spoken out against the expansion.
During the final hearing on Tuesday evening, two Dutch psychiatrists urged parliamentarians not to expand MAID to mental illness alone. Jim van Os, a professor of psychiatry at Utrecht University Medical Center, said the Dutch experience offered "a warning for Canada." Dr. van Os noted that requests for what he described as "psychiatric euthanasia" for people under 30 increased to nearly 900 per year from 30 in the past six years. Completed deaths rose five-fold. Most of those people, he noted, were traumatized, marginalized and living in poverty. Dutch law, he said, requires that a patient exhaust all other options first. No such safeguard is in place in Canada, he added. "That single difference will in our assessments drive Canadian numbers beyond ours."
Wilbert van Rooij, a Dutch psychiatrist with 30 years of experience, spoke of the moral toll on the psychiatry profession. Asking psychiatrists to determine when a patient should die, he said, "is a burden psychiatry was never designed to carry."
A third Dutch psychiatrist, Sisco van Veen, took a more nuanced approach. He argued that it is "hard to justify excluding patients with psychiatric disorders whose suffering can be immense." Dr. van Veen said that psychiatric euthanasia remains relatively rare at about 2 per cent of all cases.
The heads of psychiatry at 13 Canadian medical schools wrote to the committee last week calling for the federal government to halt the expansion to mental illness. They argued that there is no accurate way to determine when a mental disorder is incurable or to adequately protect vulnerable patients.
Ottawa prepared to halt plan to allow MAID for mental illness
Federal government will follow recommendations of parliamentary committee studying issue, sources say
www.theglobeandmail.com
The federal government is prepared to table legislation that would pause the expansion of medical assistance in dying to people whose sole condition is mental illness if a parliamentary committee that is studying the issue recommends it, three sources told The Globe and Mail. The government expects that the committee will make such a recommendation based on evidence presented in hearings and questions from MPs over the past two months, the sources said. The committee was hearing its final witnesses on Tuesday. It will write a report, with its recommendations, to be tabled in the weeks or months ahead.
The government opened up MAID to people who were not facing imminent death in 2021, but the legislation carved out a temporary exclusion for mental illness. This meant people without physical ailments were still unable to qualify for assisted death. That exemption was extended twice by former prime minister Justin Trudeau and is currently set to end in March of next year. Mark Carney has not spoken about the issue, but the Prime Minister has been under pressure, including from religious figures and disability advocates, to delay it further – or scrap it altogether.
The committee has heard from physicians and Health Canada officials that the country may not be ready to move ahead, that the health care system isn't ready for the expansion and that determining eligibility would be complex. The parliamentary committee's co-chairs, Liberal MP Marcus Powlowski and Conservative Senator Yonah Martin, have both previously spoken out against the expansion.
During the final hearing on Tuesday evening, two Dutch psychiatrists urged parliamentarians not to expand MAID to mental illness alone. Jim van Os, a professor of psychiatry at Utrecht University Medical Center, said the Dutch experience offered "a warning for Canada." Dr. van Os noted that requests for what he described as "psychiatric euthanasia" for people under 30 increased to nearly 900 per year from 30 in the past six years. Completed deaths rose five-fold. Most of those people, he noted, were traumatized, marginalized and living in poverty. Dutch law, he said, requires that a patient exhaust all other options first. No such safeguard is in place in Canada, he added. "That single difference will in our assessments drive Canadian numbers beyond ours."
Wilbert van Rooij, a Dutch psychiatrist with 30 years of experience, spoke of the moral toll on the psychiatry profession. Asking psychiatrists to determine when a patient should die, he said, "is a burden psychiatry was never designed to carry."
A third Dutch psychiatrist, Sisco van Veen, took a more nuanced approach. He argued that it is "hard to justify excluding patients with psychiatric disorders whose suffering can be immense." Dr. van Veen said that psychiatric euthanasia remains relatively rare at about 2 per cent of all cases.
The heads of psychiatry at 13 Canadian medical schools wrote to the committee last week calling for the federal government to halt the expansion to mental illness. They argued that there is no accurate way to determine when a mental disorder is incurable or to adequately protect vulnerable patients.
