Canada has spent five years trying to do something many psychiatrists say is impossible: reliably determine when a person with mental illness will never get better. On Wednesday, Prime Minister Mark Carney’s government finally gave up.
Justice Minister Sean Fraser said officials would introduce legislation this fall for an indefinite period. stop the expansion medical assistance in dying (MAID) to people whose only reason for ending their life is a mental illness. Canada was poised to become one of the few countries in the world to explicitly allow medical assistance in dying for mental illnesses, but an advisory committee recommended in June that the government not pursue the expansion.
As I documented in my report For The free pressFor more than a decade, access to the medical assistance in dying system managed by the Canadian government has evolved in only one direction: more assisted suicides. In Canada, one in 20 deaths is due to triggered by MAIDamong the highest rates of assisted suicide in the world, and it has become just another part of the health system. Patients only need to demonstrate that they are suffering from an “intolerable” illness and cannot be “relieved under conditions that the person considers acceptable,” not a terminal illness.
Wednesday’s announcement showed that even Canada has its limits. Fraser cited “very real concerns about people living in communities with inadequate access to mental health services” and a “lack of consensus about when mental illness is irremediable.”
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