Canada to Keep Mental Illness Alone Out of Assisted-Dying Eligibility Indefinitely

Canada's federal government will introduce legislation this fall to indefinitely bar people whose only medical condition is a mental illness from medical assistance in dying, Justice Minister Sean Fraser said Wednesday, Oct. 7. The bill would cancel an expansion that had been set to take effect on March 17, 2027.

"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 in the foyer of the House of Commons. "While there is not a perfect consensus on this issue, we believe this is the correct approach at this particular time."

Fraser gave two reasons. One was concern about people in communities with inadequate access to mental health services. The other was a lack of agreement among doctors about when a mental illness can be considered irremediable, which is a legal condition for eligibility.

Fraser announced the plan with Health Minister Marjorie Michel. The same bill would allow advance requests, letting people diagnosed with a serious, incurable illness that will later take away their capacity give consent while they still can. Provinces, which run health care, would decide whether to offer advance requests. Quebec already allows them under its own law.

Parliament legalized medical assistance in dying in 2016. After a 2019 Quebec Superior Court ruling, a 2021 law extended eligibility to people whose natural death is not reasonably foreseeable and set a temporary exclusion for cases where mental illness is the only condition. Parliament extended that exclusion in 2023 and again in 2024, when it moved the date to March 17, 2027.

A special parliamentary committee recommended in June that the government "indefinitely exclude persons whose sole underlying medical condition is a mental illness" from eligibility.