Access to doctor-assisted death in Manitoba requires balance, health minister says

Providing doctor-assisted death requires a balancing act between accessibility and allowing medical professionals to opt out, according to Manitoba's health minister.

This week, two faith-based hospitals in Winnipeg said they would not be providing doctor-assisted death to their patients. Both Concordia Hospital (Anabaptist-Mennonite) and St. Boniface Hospital (Catholic) say they will not offer the legal service to patients.

"We know that the courts have indicated that medical-assisted dying is legal in Manitoba and we respect the court's decision. There has to be accessibility to the procedure and we respect that as well," Kelvin Goertzen said.

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In June, the federal government amended the criminal code with Bill C-14 to allow doctors and nurse practitioners to help patients with "grievous and irremediable" illnesses to die. Manitoba introduced its own policy to implement medical assistance in dying, commonly called MAID, that same month.

While the new legislation says doctors and nurses can conscientiously object from administering medically assisted death, it does not say the same thing about hospitals or institutions.

"There has been a great deal of concern expressed to me as the minister of health and to other officials that there are some facilities that have a very strong objection to participating," Goertzen said.

In Manitoba, the facilities are not required to perform the procedure however Goertzen said there has to be a policy in place "so that there can be an appropriate hand-off of care" to another hospital.

"It's important to remember that not every procedure in the medical system is available in every facility," he said.

"There might be some individuals who want certain medical procedures, a heart procedure or other things, in the facilities closer to their home or in every hospital in Winnipeg but that doesn't happen either."

It is too early to say how many people will request medically assisted deaths, but Goertzen said the last numbers he saw suggests it will be about a dozen a year. 

"We don't expect this is going to be a problem with accessibility because of the relatively low numbers," he said.