(LifeSiteNews) – The Quebec government said it will soon allow early “advance” requests for euthanasia even though it is still not allowed by federal law.
Starting October 30, Quebec residents will be able to request Medical Assistance in Dying (MAiD) in advance. The provincial law to allow MAiD in advance was passed in June 2023 and came with a timeline stating that it had to be put into force within 24 months.
On September 7, provincial Justice Minister Simon Jolin-Barrette of the Coalition Avenir Québec government said in a statement to the media that all residents in the province will soon be able to ask for advance MAiD requests. In August, senior ministers from the provincial government said they would not “wait any longer” for Canada’s federal Criminal Code to be amended to allow the change.
As it stands, the federal government has not approved MAiD by advance request, meaning it is not legal.
When it comes to criminal law, this falls under federal jurisdiction, which promoted Jolin-Barrette, as reported by CBC, going as far as to ask the Crown’s Prosecution Office to not lay any charges when medical personnel terminate the life of a person who has asked for an advance request.
Canadian Health Minister Mark Holland, recently asked about Quebec going ahead with its new MAiD rules, said the government is “still evaluating it because we’ve just received it, and it’s important that we have a conversation as a society about the implications of this.”
In Canada, there are two euthanasia laws, those passed by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s Liberal government and those in Quebec, which passed Bill 11 in 2023. The bill expands MAiD to those with a serious physical disability and mandates hospices offer the procedure in addition to allowing euthanasia by advance request.
As it stands today, Quebec has the highest rate of MAiD in Canada, with a 17 percent increase in 2023 alone and 5,686 deaths reported. This represents a staggering 7.3 percent of all deaths in the province that year and means that Quebec has the highest euthanasia rates in the world.
When it comes to MAiD, Trudeau’s Liberal government sought to expand it from the chronically and terminally ill to those suffering solely from mental illness.
However, in February, after pushback from pro-life, medical, and mental health groups as well as most of Canada’s provinces, the federal government delayed the mental illness expansion until 2027.
Overall, the number of Canadians killed by lethal injection since 2016 stands at close to 65,000, with an estimated 16,000 deaths in 2023 alone. Many fear that because the official statistics are manipulated the number may be even higher.