Canadian Assisted Suicide Report is Filled With Hundreds of Errors

Over 350 reporting errors and “compliance concerns” for euthanasia and assisted suicide in British Columbia in 2024 required practitioners to receive “education” on the criminal law and professional standards regarding the administration of death, raising serious safety concerns.

The data, contained within a confidential annual report prepared by the official MAID [Medical Assistance in Dying] Oversight Unit of British Columbia’s Ministry of Health and obtained by a freedom of information request, revealed of the almost 4,200 people who ended their lives by euthanasia or assisted suicide in B.C. in 2024, over half (51.9%) required follow-up by the oversight unit, “with a total of 2,807 errors across those cases”.

353 of these errors – 12.5% – were severe enough to warrant practitioners and pharmacists receiving additional “education” over concerns about compliance with legal requirements and professional standards.

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TThe Ministry of Health said that such errors only amounted to “a deviation from a mandated MAID process that, on its own, has a limited impact on the integrity of the assessment”.

Some of the most common errors consisted of practitioners not reviewing the relationship between the person who requested euthanasia or assisted suicide and the person who acted as their witness to the request.

There were also errors so serious that they had “a significant impact on the integrity of the MAID process, appropriateness of care, and/or public safety”. These cases subsequently required a formal notice to the practitioner from the director of MAID, in addition to referrals to regulatory colleges and/or referrals to law enforcement.

17,304 people are reported to have ended their lives by euthanasia or assisted suicide in British Columbia since 2018. This means that since 2018, 35 cases have had “a significant impact on the integrity of the MAID process, appropriateness of care, and/or public safety”.

Dr Ramona Coelho, a former member of the Chief Coroner of Ontario’s Medical Assistance in Dying Death Review Committee (MDRC), said that such proliferating errors “raise important questions about safety and transparency in the reporting of a procedure that causes death”.

Coelho added that regulatory oversight “cannot simply consist of reviewing practitioner-submitted paperwork after a death has occurred”, as by the time errors are discovered, it may be too late for the relevant individuals concerned.

This is not the first time that endemic serious errors have been uncovered in British Columbia’s euthanasia and assisted suicide regime

Errors of this scale and kind have been uncovered previously in the euthanasia and assisted suicide regime of British Columbia.

The results of a previous freedom of information request from the Oversight Unit revealed systemic failures in its assisted suicide and euthanasia programme, including thousands of paperwork errors and a recommendation that oversight should not be “overly strict” since this “may discourage” doctors from providing euthanasia “despite high demand”.

The information obtained from the freedom of information request reportedly found many dangerous failures in the province’s assisted suicide and euthanasia programme, including “thousands of paperwork errors among the 2,767 [assisted suicide and euthanasia] deaths recorded in 2023”.

According to reports, one of the most worrying revelations resulting from the FOI is that of a “briefing decision note”. The note, reportedly written by an anonymous bureaucrat and addressed to the deputy minister of health, argues that the Oversight Unit should not be “strict” in reporting infractions of protocols.

“Overly strict or severe” reporting of infractions of MAID-delivery protocols to professional colleges or the police from the Oversight Unit “may discourage physicians or nurse practitioners from providing MAID despite high demand”, the note said. It recommended introducing a “weighted criteria model” for judging practitioner infractions of the assisted suicide and euthanasia programme’s protocols, which Stephen Brown, then the deputy minister of health, agreed to.

Trudo Lemmens, professor in Health Law and Policy at the University of Toronto, criticised the briefing note, stating that it is “stunning to state that so explicitly”. Dr Christopher Lyon, a research fellow at the University of York who previously worked at McGill University in Canada, called these revelations “staggering”, stating that the province should be “very concerned” about why the assisted suicide and euthanasia rates are so high.

Isabel Grant, a law professor at the University of British Columbia, said reading about these revelations was “alarming”.

“Looking at only one indicator—errors around the eligibility requirements—we see an error rate of 4.9 per cent. When we are talking about close to 3,000 deaths, that is a very high number”, she said.

“Couple this with the concern raised in the report that we cannot have an ‘overly strict’ referral to law enforcement or professional colleges … [and] we can see the approach of the British Columbia government to MAID deaths – err on the side of making MAID accessible, not on the side of compliance with the Criminal Code”.

Spokesperson for Right To Life UK, Catherine Robinson, said “These latest revelations are yet more of the same from the awful euthanasia and assisted suicide regime in British Columbia, and they paint a worrying picture about how dangerous such a system is”.

“To have so many errors and issues is especially worrying, considering that the cost of each mistake could be an unlawful death. While every death through euthanasia or assisted suicide is tragic to have errors in over half of all such deaths could imply that safeguards are not worth the paper they are written on. For the Ministry of Health to dismiss many of these as only having a ‘limited impact’ is terrible”.

“The administration of assisted dying in Canada should serve as a warning about what will likely occur in England and Wales if Lauren Edwards’ new assisted suicide Bill becomes law. It is clear that this Bill lacks adequate safeguards to protect vulnerable individuals”.

“MPs and Peers would do well to heed these warnings from Canada and work to prevent this Bill from ever becoming law”.

LifeNews Note: Republished with permission from Right to Life UK.