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Older people tend to be more supportive, but there is no significant variation across income or education levels.

“I think what it shows us is that the conversation about this, the debate about this, and certainly support for physician assisted suicide is much more nuanced than we might have thought,” said Shachi Kurl, senior vice president of the Angus Reid Institute.

She said a key driver of opinion is direct exposure to palliative care for a loved one, which one person in three has had in the last five years.

“If you look at how that experience went, if it was a bad experience, if the loved one was not provided with comfort and dignity at end of life, they are twice as likely as Canadians who have had no exposure to palliative care to say, yes, I support physician assisted suicide. Perhaps this is also a conversation about palliative care in this country,” Ms. Kurl said. “It is an emerging issue. We’re getting older as a country… The Supreme Court has to make the decision they will make, but the other piece to this is the ongoing conversation about palliative care in this country.”

Just over half of respondents said that, morally, physician assisted suicide is morally acceptable in some circumstances, compared to 18% who said it is usually wrong except in very special cases, and 9% who said it is always morally wrong. More than one person in five said it is morally acceptable whenever someone freely chooses to do it.

The findings are yet more reason to expect the Supreme Court will overturn the criminal ban on assisted suicide, as Prof. Schafer expects it will. The ban was last upheld by a 5-4 decision in the 1993 case of Sue Rodriguez.