Implementing Medical Assistance in Dying in Canada: Implications for People with Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities

The Canadian law on Medical Assistance in Dying (MAID) is an attempt to balance various constitutional rights of individuals with society’s interest in protecting vulnerable groups from harm. It aims for this protection primarily by enacting procedural safeguards. Little is known regarding how these safeguards will be implemented when the Canadian law is extended to include eligibility for MAID for those with medical conditions (including disabilities) in which death is not reasonably foreseeable. In this chapter, we explore the implications of this legislative extension on people with intellectual and developmental disabilities (IDD) in two ways: first by reviewing case studies from the NetherlandsNetherlands involving euthanasia of people with IDD, and second by examining tools for healthcare practitioners that have been developed to implement the Canadian law on MAID. We conclude, for various reasons, that procedural safeguards alone are ineffective in protecting people with IDD from the harm of an unintended or premature death.