Canadians split on if doctors, nurses can opt out of MAID

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OTTAWA — Canadians are split on if medical professionals should have the ability to opt out of providing medical assistance in dying (MAID) for moral or faith-based grounds.

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In results of a poll released Thursday by Research Co., 41% of those polled think health care professionals should be able to object to provide care connected with medical suicide if their conflicts are moral or faith-based — that’s 5% more than a similar poll conducted in 2022.

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That’s compared to the 42% who said there should be no moral or faith-based exemption, and 17% who weren’t sure.

Across Canada, Alberta was the province in which opposition to faith-based or moral exemptions are highest, at 47%, followed by Atlantic Canada at 45%, Quebec at 44%, Ontario and British Columbia tied at 41%, with Saskatchewan and Manitoba both ranking at 36%.

The gap grows when demographics are taken into consideration, the results suggest.

“Opposition is higher among Canadians aged 55 and over (45%) than among their counterparts aged 35-to-54 (42%) and aged 18 to-34 (39%,)” read a press release from the pollsters.

Gap widens on other objections

The survey also applied the same rationale to abortion and the LGBTQ2+ community.

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When asked if physicians should be exempt from care if they have moral or faith-based objections to abortion, 38% of those polled said they should, while 48% disagreed.

Fourteen per cent were unsure.

The cohorts, however, split further when asked about medical professionals with moral or faith-based objections to providing care for members of the LGBTQ2+ community — with 30% supporting exemptions, 57% against them, and 14% unsure.

MAID rules changing next year

As Canada prepares to expand the scope of this country’s medically-assisted suicide framework, numerous advocacy groups are sounding the alarm.

Eligibility criteria is expected to expand on March 17, 2027, to include individuals seeking MAID whose sole underlying medical condition is mental illness — a worry to groups such as Inclusion Canada, whose CEO Krista Carr told the Toronto Sun last month that the change puts vulnerable Canadians at risk.

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“When you look at track 2 (patients whose death is not a foreseeable outcome of their condition) MAID, you’ll see disproportionately women, disproportionately people that live in low socioeconomic circumstances, over 50% reported feeling like they were a burden to their family, it just goes on and on,” Carr said.

“We were told that we were fear-mongering, that this would never happen, and our medical system is more sophisticated than that and we’ve got safeguards — that’s simply untrue, there’s no oversight for any of it.”

While Statistics Canada doesn’t include medical suicide in their annual list of common causes of death, the government’s own numbers indicate that 16,499 Canadians died via MAID in 2024.

That made MAID the year’s fourth most common cause of death, between accidents (20,260) and strokes (13,725).

bpassifiume@postmedia.com

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