Data collected under the Regulations for the Monitoring of Medical Assistance in Dying (MAID)

(November 1, 2018 – December 31, 2022; January 1, 2023 – December31, 2023)

 This is an administrative dataset collected by Health Canada under the Regulations for the Monitoring of Medical Assistance in Dying (the Regulations).  

 The Regulations first came into force on November 1, 2018 following the passage of Canada’s initial legislation on MAID (former Bill C-14) in 2016. However, they were amended in response to legislative changes enacted in 2021 through former Bill C-7. The current Regulations came into force on January 1, 2023.

 Canada’s initial legislation on MAID (former Bill C-14) limited eligibility for MAID to individuals with a reasonably foreseeable natural death (RFND). Former Bill C-7 removed this eligibility requirement and introduced a two-track approach for MAID assessment and provisions, with different procedural safeguards depending on whether a person’s natural death was reasonably foreseeable (RFND; Track 1), or not reasonably foreseeable (non-RFND; Track 2). The 2023 Regulations expanded data collection to provide a more comprehensive and inclusive picture regarding the characteristics of persons requesting MAID and why they are making these requests. 

 The MAID data consists of two sets of files:

• The first data file contains information on written requests received between November 1, 2018 and December 31, 2022.  Though MAID was legalized in circumstances where an individual’s death was not reasonably foreseeable in March 2021, this dataset does not have a variable in the data to make the discernable distinction between these two tracks.
• The second data file contains information on all MAID requests received by Health Canada under the new Regulations, starting from January 2023, which reflect the legislative changes enacted in 2021. These data delineate between requests from individuals assessed as Track 1 and Track 2. The dataset contains new variables, including gender identity, race, Indigenous identity, self-identified disability, place of residence, previous request for MAID and additional details on the person’s health condition. The outcome of each request is recorded in a separate datafile, resulting in four possibilities:

1. those who received MAID, through either physician- or self-administered substance(s);
2. those who applied for MAID and subsequently withdrew their application;
3. those who applied for MAID but were either deemed ineligible or were found eligible but failed to meet a procedural safeguard; or
4. those who applied for MAID but died from another cause.

Due to these changes, the 2023 data are not amalgamated with the previous years of data, thus resulting in two sets of data that are available when “all years” of MAID data are requested through the research data centres.