Canada postpones plan to offer medically assisted death to the mentally ill
Canada is postponing a plan to offer people with mental illness the option of medically assisted death, two ministers said Monday.
The announcement by Mark Holland, the Health Minister, and Arif Virani, the Justice Minister, came after a special parliamentary committee view the plan concluded that there are not enough doctors, especially psychiatrists, in the country to assess and help patients with mental illnesses who want to end their lives.
“The system has to be ready, and we have to get it right,” Mr. Holland told reporters. “It is clear from the conversations we have had that the system is not ready yet and that we need more time.”
Neither minister offered a timeline for the latest extension. After an earlier delay, the expansion was due to come into effect on March 17.
Canada already offers medically assisted death to terminally and chronically ill people, but the plan to expand the program to people with mental illness has divided Canadians.
Some critics say the plan reflects the inability of Canada's public health care system to provide adequate psychiatric care, which is chronically underfunded and faces demand that exceeds its availability.
Many psychiatrists say the plan would undermine efforts to prevent suicide, and they have expressed concern that patients with complex problems will abandon treatments that can take years to produce results in favor of medically assisted death.
Advocates say denying people with mental illnesses the opportunity to end their suffering through death is a form of discrimination.
Canada then introduced medically assisted dying The Supreme Court ruled in 2015 that requiring people to cope with unbearable suffering violates fundamental rights to freedom and security.
The law was expanded in 2021 after the Quebec Supreme Court struck down the government's original assisted death law on constitutional grounds, saying it only applied to people whose deaths were “reasonably foreseeable.”
The 2021 law expanded access to people in “serious and irreparable” conditions. The separate provisions for people with mental illnesses, which were added to the law by Canada's unelected Senate, were originally delayed by two years.
Members of the opposition Conservative Party have accused Prime Minister Justin Trudeau's Liberal government of promoting a “culture of death.” Some politicians on the left have also opposed the expansion of mental illness and have said they want to focus on further expanding psychiatric care.
Michael Cooper, a Conservative MP who sat on the special committee, said the government should make the delay indefinite.
“I see no indication that the fundamental issues that are – or should be – at the heart of halting this expansion will be resolved,” he said.
Dying with Dignity Canada, a group that advocates for the right to medically assisted dying, said in a statement that it was “disheartened” by the latest delay.
The health and justice ministers said the new implementation date would be included in legislation to be introduced soon that would formally extend the delay.
About 13,200 Canadians received an assisted death last year, a 31 per cent increase from 2021, according to a report from the federal Ministry of Health. About 3.5 percent of these patients were not terminally ill but had other qualifying medical conditions.
Both Canada and the United States have a three-digit suicide and crisis hotline: 988. If you are having suicidal thoughts, call or text 988 and visit 988.approx (Canada) or 988lifeline.org (United States) for a list of additional resources. This service provides bilingual crisis support in every country, 24 hours a day, seven days a week.