MARTIN: Well, I thank you for the distinction between the Canadian program and the U.S. And so that's who is qualifying now, both people who will be dying shortly and those who are living longer but really suffering with how they're living. It really opened up to allow for more chronic conditions for things like chronic pain.
And in March of 2021, the Canadian law changed. In Canada, it was always the case, from the beginning in 2016 when it was legalized, that people with chronic diseases who still naturally could live for several years were qualifying for assisted dying. So their deaths would occur whether they were medically assisted or not. It's unlike the States where - in the States where it's legal, assisted dying is only for terminal illness and people who have less than six months left to live. LI: The issue in Canada is that it's actually never been clear who assisted dying was intended for, whether it was meant for those with terminal illness who are suffering from how they were about to die or whether it was intended for people with chronic illness who are suffering with how they're currently living. So can you just kind of just set the table for us? Who can currently request medical assistance in dying in Canada? And do you have any sense of how many people actually do in the course of a year? And thank you for the invitation to speak on this really challenging topic. Li actually developed the medical assistance in dying program for the University Health Network in Toronto, Canada. She is a cancer psychiatrist who works in end-of-life care. Madeline Li to walk us through some of these thorny issues. We suspect that this is the kind of dilemma that might resonate across borders. But as you might imagine, that has raised many difficult ethical and moral questions, both about the motivations of health care workers who might offer the option and also about the competence of patients who might request it. And eventually, even as early as next March, Canadians living with severe mental illness could also be eligible under the law known as medical assistance in dying, or MAID. Canada has allowed terminally ill patients to end their lives with medical assistance since 2016.
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