Introduction

Health Canada published interim reports covering 18 months following the passage of a criminal law amendment implementing the 2015 Carter decision by the Supreme Court of Canada. From these the Project Administrator has derived primary tables and charts, some of which appear below.

The data in the interim reports are incomplete and somewhat inconsistent. Except in Quebec, administrative and reporting systems were not in place when the law came into effect, so the reports reflect shifting views about what should be included, definitions of terms, etc. In addition, some provinces were selective in providing data, and Quebec did not contribute to the interim reports at all.

In presenting the data from the interim reports, additional categories have been added that do not appear in the reports, such as the number of practitioners involved in each case. The additional categories highlight gaps in the data collected.

Some data have been modified to facilitate comparisons between reporting periods. For example, the proportional percentages of male and female decedents reported in 2016 are reported here as numbers.

Sometimes this presentation differs from the original report. For example, the average age for decedents in 2017 is presented here as "Unknown" because limitations identified in the notes of the original reports indicate that "unknown" is arguably more accurate.

Supplementary tables and charts have been prepared to provide missing data (such as Quebec statistics and numbers of practitioners) and some context for the data in the interim reports (such as deaths from selected causes).

Other tables have been added to assist in interpreting the data in the interim reports. For example, the interim reports use age groupings that do not correspond to age groupings used by Statistics Canada. This problem has been addressed here by identifying roughly comparable Health Canada and Statistics Canada age groupings.

• Download the full Excel file (Includes links to original reports). Click on grey hightlighted cells in the spreadsheets to see the annotations that explain modifications. Links to the original reports are included on each page to facilitate comparison with the original reports.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.

Suggested citation: Murphy S. Euthanasia and Assisted Suicide in Canada. Interim Reports (2016-2017). Protection of Conscience Project, 28 March, 2019.