Dementia and assisted death in Canada

By Jordan Heath-Rawlings

In today’s Big Story podcast, when the government passed bill C-14, allowing chronically ill patients to access assisted death, some end-of-life conversations became easier. But not all of them.

The current law in Canada does not allow patients who have been diagnosed with dementia to plan their deaths. For many people who are frightened about the final days of the disease, that’s not acceptable. But there’s a reason very few places in the world have allowed these patients to avail themselves of the service. The questions raised by it are some of the most fundamental to humanity, and the burden the decision would place on family members and even doctors is unfathomable.

GUEST: Shannon Proudfoot, Maclean’s (You can read the pieces Shannon references here, here and here.)

You can subscribe to The Big Story podcast on iTunes or Google Podcasts.

You can also find it at thebigstorypodcast.ca.

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