Canada indefinitely suspends plan to extend assisted dying to people with mental illness

Canada is indefinitely suspending plans to widen its medically assisted dying law, known as Maid, to cover people whose sole condition is mental illness. The government points to a lack of consensus on who should qualify.

Justice Minister Sean Fraser said on Wednesday that although there is no perfect consensus on the issue, the government believes this is the right approach at this time. As a result, Canadians with mental illness as their only condition will not gain access to assisted dying in March 2027, as had been planned. A bill to suspend the expansion indefinitely is due to be introduced in the coming weeks.

The legislation will also let patients with a progressing, incurable illness consent to assisted dying in advance, before their health declines to the point where they can no longer do so. The final decision on this will rest with individual provinces. Advance requests are not currently legal under federal law, though Quebec allows them for people with serious and incurable illnesses.

How the rules have changed

Assisted dying became legal in Canada in 2016 for people with terminal illnesses, who still make up the vast majority of cases. After a court case in Quebec, it was extended in 2021 to people with incurable conditions whose death was not imminent, a pathway known as "track two". The expansion to mental illness was first due in 2023 but was delayed twice to allow time to study how it would work in practice.

Arguments on both sides

Advocates of expansion say people with mental illness should have the same rights as other patients, and that excluding them breaches constitutional rights and access to healthcare. A federal court case challenging the earlier delay is still pending, and Fraser acknowledged the Supreme Court could weigh in at some point. Claire Brosseau, who has treatment-resistant bipolar 1 disorder and is part of that case, told the BBC earlier this year that euthanasia would offer her "a safe death".

Others worry that medicine does not yet understand mental illness well enough to set eligibility fairly. Some experts also argue the programme risks becoming a way of easing the suffering of people who would be better helped by affordable housing and healthcare. A parliamentary committee recommended earlier this year that Canada indefinitely exclude those whose sole underlying condition is mental illness, and noted a pressing need for better access to mental health services. Some members dissented, calling the process "fundamentally flawed" and "biased".