(OSV News) -- Pro-life and anti-euthanasia activists in Canada are decrying that government's latest efforts to expand its assisted suicide policy by accepting "advance requests" -- and a national survey on the topic was described to OSV News as being "written under the assumption" that participants support assisted suicide.
"It tells you right off the bat that the government is really not interested in a clear consultation. They're more concerned about how they're going to bring in euthanasia by request," said Alex Schadenberg, executive director of the Ontario-based Euthanasia Prevention Coalition.
Schadenberg and others have raised a number of concerns regarding what the federal government calls a "national conversation" on Canada's law on "medical assistance in dying," or MAID.
Enacted in 2016, MAID exempts from criminal charges doctors and nurse practitioners who either directly administer or prescribe medication to cause a person's death at their own request. The law includes protocols for ensuring a patient requesting MAID is fully informed and freely consents.
From 2016-2023, more than 60,300 ended their lives through MAID. The 15,343 who did so in 2023 -- a number that did not include over 2,900 individuals who died before their MAID request could be approved -- accounted for 4.7%, or one in 20, of Canada's 2023 deaths, according to government data.
Almost 96% of the 2023 MAID deaths were sought by men (51.6%) and women (48.4%) whose median age was just under 78 years old, with cancer the most frequently cited condition (64.1%). MAID does not require applicants to have a terminal medical condition, and efforts to expand the program to those citing mental illness as their primary reason for seeking MAID, although tabled until 2027 due to litigation and public pushback, remain under discussion.
On Oct. 30, the province of Quebec -- which in 2023 saw the highest number (36.5%) of Canada's MAID applications -- began accepting advance requests for MAID, although the program is regulated at the federal level. Two days prior, the federal government's Health Canada agency announced the November rollout of a what it called a "national conversation" on the issue, with discussions, roundtables and online surveys through the end of January 2025. The statement also noted the federal government would not challenge Quebec's MAID expansion, which the province had approved in June 2023.
But that "national conversation" is off to a less than balanced start, Schadenberg told OSV News.
"If you look at the questionnaire they're asking Canadians to fill out, there's a huge number of questions that assume you support euthanasia by advanced request," he said.
The online survey can only be completed by adult Canadian residents, and OSV News was unable to view it since the survey website detected a U.S.-based IP address.
However, Schadenberg -- who has posted an online guide to the survey for those who oppose euthanasia -- reviewed the questions with OSV News, noting that while "the first six questions are not problematic," even including one that allows for a 250-word narrative answer, those toward the end of the survey are biased in favor of advance requests for MAID.
"You get to question 7 (and on), and you can't answer those questions if you oppose killing," he said.
That question, which asks respondents to "rate the importance" of several "potential conditions as safeguards when a person is developing their advance request," and questions 8-13, all pose their queries with some level of presumption that advance requests have been permitted, he explained.
More broadly, said Schadenberg, the very foundations of Canada's MAID law are fraught with unclear terminology and logic, especially regarding the pivotal term "suffering."
"The arguments that have been made to widen it (MAID) are essentially limitless, because of what it means to be a human being," he said. "We all have our physical, psychological, social and spiritual natures. … We all have a sort of level of human experience which at times we might want to die. It's just normal; that's what makes us human. ... We all go through these very difficult times of our life, so if you're going to legalize this and say the primary concept is around eliminating suffering ... then how can you limit it?
"This is the problem: You can't define suffering," he said. "It's impossible … for anyone to define suffering, because it's all personal. ... Part of the problem with the Canadian law is that it was never defined from the beginning. They never defined it on purpose. ... You have to define it if you want to have any control over it whatsoever. If you don't define it, it remains uncontrolled. And this is the serious problem that we face."
The Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops told OSV News it did plan to issue specific comment on the national survey regarding advance requests, a spokesperson for the conference pointed to the bishops' recent statement following a May symposium on palliative care, organized by the conference and the Pontifical Academy for Life. That statement called for promoting "an authentic vision and practice of palliative care that is separate and
distinct from euthanasia and assisted suicide," as well as "finding ways to limit and lessen the harms done" by euthanasia in places where the laws permit the practice.
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