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The Canadian MAID euthanasia program has killed more than 100,000 people and it’s morally repugnant – deserving the condemnation it has earned.
But reportedly it will not be extended to mentally ill people – at least according to a government announcement.
Canada will indefinitely prohibit euthanasia for people whose only condition is a mental illness, Justice Minister Sean Fraser said Wednesday, dropping an expansion that had been scheduled for March 2027.
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Fraser said the Liberal government will introduce legislation this fall so medical assistance in dying cannot be provided when mental illness is the sole basis. The decision follows a June report from a special joint parliamentary committee that heard from more than three dozen witnesses.
“Canada has made a decision not to move forward with the expansion that is scheduled in the Criminal Code of medical assistance in dying in circumstances where mental illness is the sole basis,” Fraser told reporters on Parliament Hill. “While there is not a perfect consensus on this issue, we believe this is the correct approach at this particular time.”
He said the position was “based on what we sincerely believe is right,” not on where the politics might land. Among the reasons he cited were “very real concerns about people who live in communities with inadequate access to mental-health services” and testimony that doctors do not agree on when a mental illness is irremediable.
Canada legalized the practice in 2016 and widened it in 2021, through Bill C-7, to people whose natural deaths are not reasonably foreseeable. Eligibility based on mental illness alone was delayed more than once, most recently until March 2027. Canada had passed 100,000 reported euthanasia deaths in May since legalization in June 2016.
The announcement came the same day the House was set to vote on Bill C-218, a private member’s bill from Conservative MP Tamara Jansen. The bill would amend the Criminal Code to provide that a mental disorder is not a grievous and irremediable medical condition for which a person could receive an assisted death. Fraser thanked Jansen for introducing it, then said Liberals would vote against it over technical objections.
Jansen accused him of playing games “hours before” the vote.
“We have no idea what his bill’s going to say. He’s telling us all sorts of things, he hasn’t even seen the bill himself. I find it incredibly negligent. He had the entire summer to put this together,” she said. She asked Liberal members to support her bill “because people’s lives are at risk, very vulnerable Canadians,” and said Conservatives were willing to change its wording.
Fraser said C-218’s reference to “mental disorders” could be read to include neurological diseases such as Alzheimer’s or Parkinson’s, which can already qualify, and that the bill does not address advance consent. The Liberal measure is expected to allow an assisted death based on a request made while a person still has capacity, if that person has an incurable illness expected to destroy capacity and cause intolerable suffering.
Provinces deliver health care, so the rules may not be uniform. Quebec already permits some advance requests. Alberta passed a law in March that would prohibit them.
Fraser said the government has no date yet for its bill. “If I had a date for you today, I would share it,” he said. “But we will be looking to move forward as quickly as possible.”
