After a decade of widening access to assisted dying, Canada announced it will not extend medical assistance in dying (MAID) to people whose only condition is a mental illness. The Canadian Parliament passed the expansion in 2021, but after two delays, Justice Minister Sean Fraser says it will be shelved indefinitely, with legislation to follow later this year.
The reasons deserve attention. Mr Fraser pointed to a lack of consensus among doctors about when a mental illness can truly be called irremediable. He also pointed to concern that Canadians cannot reliably get the mental health support they need. The State was preparing to offer death to people it could not promise to treat.
Marcus Powlowski, a Liberal MP who co-chaired the parliamentary committee on the question, was blunter in his written opinion. Offering death as an alternative to meeting people’s unmet social needs, he said, is the “opposite” of compassion.
Some Canadians who hoped for this change say they feel betrayed, and their pain deserves understanding. We know the suffering caused by severe mental illness is real. But the answer to suffering we have failed to treat is care. It is not a lethal dose.
It would be reassuring to see this as Canada coming to its senses, but recent developments in Canada and New Zealand highlight ongoing debates about expanding euthanasia laws, emphasizing the need for cautious consideration.
When Canada legalised MAID in 2016, it was limited to people whose deaths were reasonably foreseeable. That was the safeguard. Five years later, Parliament removed it and scheduled mental illness to follow. By the end of 2024, more than 76,000 Canadians had died via assisted suicide, and MAID now accounts for around 1 in 20 Canadian deaths.
Each expansion was sold as modest, compassionate and carefully safeguarded. Then each safeguard became a barrier. And Canada has not actually stopped. The same bill that keeps the mental illness exclusion will also legalise advance requests. A person will be able to sign now for a death to be carried out later, once they can no longer consent.
Alex Schadenberg, executive director of the Euthanasia Prevention Coalition, stated that “euthanasia by advanced request is a very dangerous concept as it would permit doctors and nurse practitioners to kill someone who has become incompetent, based on an advanced request.”
Health law professor Trudo Lemmens of the University of Toronto warns that this moves away from clear consent as the basis of the practice. The charity Dementia Justice has raised the risk of coercive control and elder abuse.
Critics asked that the two issues be debated separately, but the minister declined. While opponents of this expansion got the retreat they asked for, it was bundled with another expansion they feared. Pro-life advocates may welcome this temporary victory, but it may not endure. Dying With Dignity Canada is challenging the mental illness exclusion in court as discriminatory. What Parliament declines to enact, the courts may ultimately require.
Could it happen here?
Not yet. But the direction is familiar.
In 2020, New Zealanders were told our law would be different. The End of Life Choice Act is limited to people with a terminal illness likely to end their life within six months. David Seymour narrowed his own bill to that limit and said it would be one of the world’s most conservative regimes. Voters backed it on those terms.
That limit is doing real work. In the year to March 2026, 486 assisted suicide deaths took place, accounting for 1.29 per cent of all deaths. Of the 165 applicants turned down at their first assessment, 140 did not meet the six-month test.
As we set out earlier this week, ACT MP Todd Stephenson’s bill would replace that test with a looser one, and would waive final consent for patients who lose capacity after scheduling their death. The bill’s own explanatory note says it reflects Australian and Canadian law. Mr Stephenson now calls the six-month limit “arbitrary”.
While nobody in our Parliament is proposing euthanasia for mental illness now, the history shows that Canada’s 2016 law took five years to include such cases, illustrating the potential for gradual expansion and increased risks.
The true measure of a country lies in how it cares for its most vulnerable-those who are sick, frail and despairing-by providing care and proper treatment, not by endorsing policies and laws that offer assisted suicide more quickly than other options.
Canada has shown us where this path leads. This week, even Canada recognised the dangers of expanding MAID. New Zealand needn’t wait a decade to learn the same lesson, and we’d be foolish to ignore this warning.
*Written by Family First staff writers*
