Canada will put off medically induced death for people who are mentally ill until at least 2027. This is a follow-up to a story we reported last week. The MAID, or Medical Assistance in Dying, program was set to be extended to people with mental illness but now the government has extended that extension because doctors won’t do it!
To be fair, Canada has a doctors shortage anyway but they also have a shortage of doctors that want to sign off on death for mentally ill people. Because who would want to sign off on someone’s voluntary death if that person’s death was not otherwise inevitable???
The Canadian government puts it this way: “This extension would provide more time for provinces and territories to prepare their health care systems, including the development of policies, standards, guidance and additional resources to assess and provide MAID in situations where a person’s sole underlying medical condition is a mental illness. It would also provide practitioners with more time to participate in training and become familiar with available supports, guidelines and standards.”
So…let me get this straight. Professionals won’t do this because they clearly know it’s wrong. So the Canadian government wants to train them to do it? Based on standards they don’t have!?
