It takes deep digging to find out what Canada’s permissive euthanasia regime is costing B.C. taxpayers, but the figures are there, buried in the 514-page Medical Services Commission Payment Schedule. 

Pages 118-120 of the 2025 document detail how much doctors are paid, every step of the way toward killing their patients. What the numbers show is that British Columbia’s health system pays doctors much more to euthanize a patient than the $327.48 listed in its public fee schedule.

That amount has increased 64 per cent from the $200 paid in 2017, when the government established its first permanent fee structure for medical assistance in dying.

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But the total cost of euthanizing a single patient can be as much as eight times greater — about $2,600 per patient, including assessment for and prescribing MAiD, a mandatory second assessment, euthanasia drugs, explanation of the MAiD waiver form and day-of “preparation and procedure.”

All told, it means the B.C. government could spend up to $8.6 million enabling the estimated 3,300 MAiD deaths the province is on track to record this year. The cost could also rise a further $600 per patient for rarer and more complex “MAiD Track 2” cases in which the patient’s death is not reasonably foreseeable.

“These figures aren’t trivial,” said Dr. Will Johnston, a Vancouver family physician who heads the Euthanasia Resistance Coalition in B.C. “Some doctors are being really well paid to do this. They are very well paid to just ask people if they want to die, and then to kill them.”

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The province’s taxpayer-funded Medical Services Plan pays doctors for 100 per cent of all MAiD-related “medical” services, and B.C.’s taxpayer-funded Pharmacare plan pays all the costs of the three drugs most commonly used to take a patient’s life.

B.C. doctors’ fees are found in the Ministry of Health’s “Medical Services Commission Payment Schedule,” dated April 30, 2025. For a Track 1 patient whose death is reasonably foreseeable, a doctor who makes the original MAiD assessment and prescription can bill up to $453.15 for nine 15-minute “units” worth $50.35 each. For a Track 2 patient they can get up to $906.30 for 18 units. A mandatory second assessment by another doctor can cost up to $352.45 (seven units) for Track 1 and $503.50 (10 units) for Track 2. A doctor can receive up to $174 for explaining and reviewing the optional “Waiver of Final Consent” signed in advance by some patients who fear they won’t be able to give the legally required final consent immediately before their MAiD death. Finally, the “MAiD event preparation and procedure” — 10 to 15 minutes for the intravenous lethal injection — is worth $327.48 for both tracks.

All told, that’s about $1,300 paid to doctors for a single MAiD death. This figure is similar to the $1,225 paid to doctors for each MAiD death in Quebec in 2022.

The federal government’s Parliamentary Budget Officer estimated in a 2020 report that the cost of drugs for a single MAiD case would be $1,324 — $662 for the drugs used and $662 for a “backup kit” of drugs.

The B.C. Catholic based its $2,600 MAiD total-cost estimate on figures for two assessments for Track 1 (the most common MAiD track), a waiver consultation, the preparation and procedure and the drugs. The estimate is remarkably close to the parliamentary report’s conclusion that a “completed case” of MAiD would cost $2,337.32.

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The B.C. government’s most recent annual report on MAiD shows that 2,767 persons died of MAiD in 2023, a 10-per-cent increase from the previous year. Projecting a similar increase this year, the province would record 3,300 euthanasia deaths in 2025.

The cost of euthanasia pales in comparison to how much money it saves the Canadian medical system, a fact that may be driving the movement to further liberalize euthanasia. Thanks to a report published by the Parliamentary Budget Officer in 2020, Canadians already know that in 2021 alone, the country’s medical system saved an estimated $149 million because of MAiD’s widespread availability.