Just a couple of brief reflections today that don’t really belong anywhere else.
Advance Requests for MAiD
We were invited to give a talk and answer questions at a seniors’ health expo recently. The room was packed, there were lots of great questions.
One thing that has become increasingly obvious over the past couple of years is that one of the biggest question seniors have isn’t about whether MAiD should exist. It isn’t about the medications or how the assessments work (though they do want to know this as well). More often than not, it’s some version of this:
“What happens if I lose capacity? How do I make sure MAiD is still available to me? Can I put it in an advance directive?”
We’ve now spoken to enough seniors’ groups that we don’t think this is a coincidence anymore. In fact, we can’t think of a single presentation where advance requests hasn’t come up. Sometimes it’s the first question. Sometimes it’s the last. But it always comes up.
Whether the government ultimately decides to expand advance requests nationally is a policy decision they are going to have to make soon, because it’s becoming increasingly difficult to ignore the fact that this is something many Canadians want available to them. Quebec recognized that over a year ago, and the National Conversation on Advance Requests for MAiD report suggests the federal government has recognized that as well. This might be the next big step forward in honouring Canadians’ desire to have control over their end of life choices.
But something else dawned on us that day.
Education vs. Persuasion
In planning our presentation introduction, we realized that every single presentation we’ve ever given starts almost exactly the same way.
We tell people that we are not there to convince them to support MAiD.
Obviously we know we say that, because we’ve written it into our slide deck, but we hadn’t really stopped to think about what that says about how we approach this work.
We genuinely do not belief it’s our job to persuade anyone what they should believe about medical assistance in dying. Whether someone supports it, opposes it, or is still trying to figure out how they feel is an incredibly personal conclusion to come to. That’s their decision, not ours.
Our job is much simpler than that.1
Our job is to provide accurate information, answer questions honestly, correct misinformation when we see it, and treat people with enough respect to trust that they are capable of making up their own minds.
When someone comes up to us after a presentation and says, “Thank you. I still don’t believe in MAiD,” our response has always been the same.
“That’s okay.”
If someone has listened to the information, considered the evidence, asked questions, and arrived at a conclusion they believe is right for them, then we’ve done exactly what we hoped to do. Maybe even more importantly, we don’t have to try and convince people what to think. MAiD already has extremely high levels of support among the Canadian public—consistently around 80%.
The more we thought about it afterwards, though, the more we realized how different our approach feels from many of the people and organizations that campaign against MAiD. We spend a lot of time following these groups because understanding misinformation means understanding how it spreads. We read it. We watch it. We fact-check it. And if anything, those tactics seem to be ramping up rather than slowing down.
By attending some of their events or following their work, it does not take long to understand that their goal isn’t simply to educate people and let them make up their own minds. The goal often seems to be to persuade people to adopt a particular conclusion, and the fear-based tactics, emotionally charged stories, and misinformation are all in service of that goal.
Worse still, it often feels as though there is a purity test. If you don't arrive at exactly the same conclusion they have, there isn't much room for disagreement. You aren't simply an individual with a different perspective—you've put yourself outside the movement and joined the other camp.
That’s an asymmetry we’ve become increasingly aware of. We will never approach MAiD discussions or discourse the way these groups do.
We are perfectly comfortable with someone reading everything we have ever written and deciding they still don’t support MAiD.
They’re still welcome in our community.
They’re still invited to ask us questions.
They’re still encouraged to challenge us.
They’re still free to disagree with us
But they are not welcome to spread lies, fear, and conspiracies. That we do not tolerate. Because our goal has never been agreement. Our goal is that people make one of the most personal decisions they’ll ever face based on accurate information rather than misinformation, fear, or manipulation.
If they do that and reach a different conclusion than we have, we can live with that.
This isn’t a “job”, really. We don’t get paid for this work.
thank you for reaffirming that this is my choice but you will walk beside me with whatever information i need to make my informed choice. May nobody try to take that away from us with misinformation and lies.
I also find the missing voices are the patients — in the misinformation and in the AB Bill 18 as example. The bill goes about is what facilities can do, what families can do, what providers can’t do. I don’t think one bit of the bill even considers the patient. Like there’s not a single provision in support of the patient. All of it is about how the facilities, families and providers. Where’s the patient in all of this?