Inclusion groups sign open letter calling on Ottawa to halt MAID for mental illness

Ninety disability advocacy and mental health organizations have signed an open letter urging the federal Liberals to permanently exclude people with mental illness from eligibility for medical assistance in dying.Inclusion Canada is leading the effort, which includes Disability Without Poverty, the Schizophrenia Society of Canada and the Canadian Mental Health Association.Under current law, people whose sole underlying condition is a mental illness will become eligible to apply for MAID assessments beginning in March 2027.The letter, which is addressed to Prime Minister Mark Carney, Health Minister Marjorie Michel and Justice Minister Sean Fraser, says that would be “a significant and misguided expansion.”It also says action by Parliament to block MAID for mental illness is justified.A parliamentary committee of MPs and senators has been studying whether Canada is prepared for the change, and is working on a report that is set to be presented to Parliament, likely before the end of June. Conservative members of the committee have been outspoken in their opposition to the planned change. Some senators on the committee and some of the expert witnesses who support MAID for mental illness have been critical of the process, arguing the committee was biased in its approach and heard mostly from people who were opposed to the change.The committee heard testimony from a number of the groups that signed the letter and oppose the extension of MAID to people with mental illness for a variety of reasons. Many of those reasons were echoed in the open letter.“Mental health-related disability is still the fastest growing disability in Canada. Mental health care remains underfunded. Wait times for psychiatric treatment are still unreasonably long,” the letter said.Inclusion Canada CEO Krista Carr said she wanted to send the letter before the committee reports back to Parliament.She said the conversation about MAID has changed since 2021, when the previous Liberal government passed an updated law to expand assisted dying to include people whose deaths were not reasonably foreseeable, known as track 2.At the time, the government excluded people with a mental illness as their only underlying condition. That exclusion has now been extended twice.“I think people feel that the way you deal with mental illness is suicide prevention and support and treatment,” Carr said.Inclusion Canada wants Ottawa to go a step further by repealing the existing option for people who are not terminally ill to seek MAID.It’s among a coalition of groups that launched a Charter challenge of the 2021 law. They argue that track 2 is providing assisted death solely on the basis of disability, and that it is therefore unconstitutional.“Many people don’t actually realize that MAID in Canada has two tracks, and that it isn’t just about your friend who’s dying with Stage 4 brain cancer and suffering intolerably. Most people, when they hear about medical assistance in dying, that’s what they think about,” Carr said.The most recently available data from Health Canada shows that more than 95% of the people who died with medical assistance in 2024 were people whose deaths were reasonably foreseeable. Most often, they reported having a cancer diagnosis.To be considered eligible for assisted dying, a person must be assessed as having “a serious and incurable illness, disease, or disability,” being in an advanced state of irreversible decline in capability and enduring physical or psychological suffering that is intolerable and cannot be relieved under conditions the person finds acceptable.Daphne Gilbert, a law professor at the University of Ottawa and chair of the board of advocacy group Dying With Dignity Canada, said she believes MAID is a form of end-of-life medical treatment.Dying With Dignity is part of a separate Charter challenge in Ontario that argues barring people from MAID whose suffering is caused only by a mental illness is discriminatory.“What’s at stake for the people who are choosing MAID for mental illness, who would want to make that choice and who are capable of making that choice, is really a pretty stark loss of autonomy and really it’s a feeling of disrespect that somehow they’re unable to make these autonomous decisions simply because they have a diagnosed mental illness,” Gilbert said.The Liberal government has not said whether it plans to allow the expansion to go ahead in March.Justice Minister Sean Fraser would not say Tuesday if he thinks the government should refer the issue to the Supreme Court of Canada for a legal opinion, given the opposing Charter challenges underway. “Once we have the benefit of the advice of the committee, we’re going to be in a better position to determine the path forward,” he said.“To date, we’ve not been preparing for a reference directly to the Supreme Court.”

Inclusion groups sign open letter calling on Ottawa to halt MAID for mental illness

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