Pushback grows against allowing mental health as reason for doctor-aided death in Canada

(OSV News) -- Tamara Jansen, a member of Canada's Parliament, can sense the growing momentum around legislation to stop the expansion of assisted suicide to those with mental illness.

On July 9 she held a press conference in Langley City, British Columbia, to raise the public profile of the Right to Recover Act, or Bill C-218, which she has introduced.

Since that event, "we are getting a lot of reaction online and through email," Jansen, who as MP represents Cloverdale-Langley City, told The Catholic Register, Canada's national Catholic newspaper based in Toronto.

Many tell her "they are shocked" there is a law in place to expand -- as of March 17, 2027 --
medical assistance in dying, known as MAiD, to individuals solely living with a mental illness.
"What I am trying to do is build that awareness and say to them, 'You need to reach out to your local member of Parliament and let them know that you support this Bill C-218,'" said Jansen. "If they know that, then I can hopefully get their MP to support me as well."

Bill C-218, which would make it a criminal offense to provide MAiD to a solely mentally ill individual, is poised to be debated "by the end of November, maybe some time in December," she said. Its first reading in the House of Commons was June 20.

Jansen has opposed euthanasia from the start. In 2016, the year of the Carter v. Canada Supreme Court decision that decriminalized physician-assisted death, she petitioned the late Conservative MP Mark Warawa to stop it in its tracks. Warawa, who also was from British Columbia, sat on the original special joint committee that examined MAiD.

Picking up the torch from retired MP Ed Fast of Abbotsford, British Columbia, whom Jansen calls a friend, the pro-life Christian hopes Bill C-218 succeeds where Fast's Bill C-314 against expanding MAiD for mental illness didn't. Fast's bill, which received unanimous support from the New Democratic Party and even secured eight Liberal votes, was defeated at its second reading by a 167-150 margin on Oct. 18, 2023.

In the immediate term, the priority is to consolidate support for the Right to Recover Act at a grassroots level. Jansen said this would then conceivably "give us that jumping off platform" to reach out to colleagues across the aisle to say, "'Hey, have you heard from your constituents. This is a big concern. We're hoping that you're going to support it.'"

Bill C-218 has already garnered robust organizational support from Physicians Together with Vulnerable Canadians, Indigenous Disability Canada, Inclusion Canada and the Association for Reformed Political Action.

Prominent individual supporters include Trudo Lemmens, a professor and the Scholl Chair in Health Law and Policy at the University of Toronto; Dr. Catherine Ferrier, president of the Physicians' Alliance Against Euthanasia; and Graydon Nicholas, former lieutenant governor of New Brunswick.

Jansen said many in the medical field believe the current path Canada is taking is "dangerous."

"The evidence shows we are completely unable to predict when a mental illness will not get better," said Dr. Sonu Gaind, chief of psychiatry at Toronto's Sunnybrook Health Sciences Center.

Helen McGee, past president of the National Association of Catholic Nurses-Canada, declared "mental illness is not irremediable. The claim that it is undermines hope and the commitment to recovery."