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Canada should 'indefinitely' abandon plans for psychiatric euthanasia, parliamentarians urge
Canada’s Criminal Code should be amended to “indefinitely exclude” people with mental illness alone from being eligible for euthanasia, a parliamentary committee has concluded.
The call for the government to abandon for an unspecified period of time opening up assisted-dying to those whose sole underlying condition is a mental disorder next March marks 10 years to the day physician-assisted death became legal in Canada.
A report to be tabled in Parliament by a special joint committee of senators and MPs contains a single recommendation: “That the Government of Canada amend the Criminal Code to indefinitely exclude persons whose sole underlying medical condition is a mental illness from eligibility for medical assistance in dying,” sources told National Post.
The mental illness expansion has already been deferred twice since 2021.
Federal Justice Minister Sean Fraser said he would be taking time to review the report. With only days to go until the House of Commons rises for its annual summer break, the federal government would not be prepared to introduce legislation until the fall.
Members of Parliament would have until July 11 to provide thoughts on the committee’s recommendation.
Critics such as Dying with Dignity Canada said the committee didn’t hear from a sufficient number of people with histories of severe psychiatric illnesses and that witnesses were biased against expansion, charges committee co-chair, Liberal MP Marcus Powlowski, a former emergency doctor in Thunder Bay, rejected.
“The number of people with lived experience with mental ilness and suicidal ideation is enormous,” Powlowski told reporters Wednesday. “If you look across Canada, there’s probably literally millions of people who had psychiatric illnesses and had thoughts of suicide.
“How could you do justice to that large number of people and bring in a couple of people that would not be represented in any manner?”
Each committee member put forward names of people they wanted to appear a witnesses and witnesses were apportioned in equal numbers to members, Powlowski said.
The ministers of health for Saskatchewan and Quebec wrote to the committee, strongly opposing the expansion of MAID to those with mental illness alone.
The joint committee heard from 44 witnesses over six meetings. Members heard opposing views from psychiatrists, raising concerns among some committee members that if the experts could not reach consensus, how could legislators recommend the expansion proceed.
Dr. Sonu Gaind, a psychiatrist, professor of psychiatry at the University of Toronto and a past president of the Canadian Psychiatric Association, testified that allowing MAID for mental illness alone would be the “height of irresponsibility” and would expose people with mental illness and addictions to assessors who can’t “filter out suicidality” or predict prognosis.
Dr. Mona Gupta, a psychiatrist and researcher with the Université de Montréal and chair of an expert panel on MAID and mental illness, testified that psychiatrists have reached a consensus that mental disorders can be irreversible.
The committee’s decision “is a wise recommendation that reflects the evidence,” Trudo Lemmens, a University of Toronto professor in health law and policy, said in an email to National Post.
“The explicit legal suspension reflects in a way that key MAID eligibility criteria — irremediability and advanced state of irreversible decline — cannot be individually established in the context of mental illness,” Lemmens said.
“We cannot predict who will not recover, and most will, particularly with quality mental health care.” Yet surveys show many Canadians struggle to get access to timely and quality mental health care, he said.
Canada’s MAID law does not require that reasonable treatments have been tried, only that they be considered.
The committee also heard testimony that people with mental illness alone have already been offered MAID, in violation of the law.
As of the end of 2024, 76,475 MAID deaths had been reported in Canada. The country is expected to mark its 100,000 death this summer.
More to come
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