With the second reading debate for Bill C-218 expected before the Christmas recess — MPs last scheduled sitting day is Friday, Dec. 12 — advocates against expanding the Canadian assisted suicide regime are urging the successful passage of this legislation tabled by Conservative Tamara Jansen in June.

Euthanasia Prevention Coalition (EPC) president Gordon Friesen and executive director Alex Schadenberg were joined by Montreal-based family physician Dr. Paul Saba, and Canadian Armed Forces veteran Kelsi Sheren for a Oct. 28 press conference on Parliament Hill. All made a case as to why medical assistance in dying (MAiD) should not be offered to individuals solely living with a mental illness. The broadening of access to the medical-killing procedure — already postponed once — is scheduled to take effect on March 17, 2027.

Friesen outlined that many safeguard promises made to the Canadian public about MAiD when it was legalized in 2016, such as the criterion it would only be available to those with a grievous and irremediable medical condition and a reasonably foreseeable natural death, have been broken.

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The EPC president declared eroding the competent choice requirement — the standard of having the mental capacity to make an autonomous and informed health-care decision — is a pathway to repeatedly bad policy resolutions.

“Plainly, the precedent of homicide for mental illness opens a crucial gateway to other situations of questionable choice,” said Friesen. “Now on the drawing board for example we find the projected euthanasia of children from 12 years onward and of infants up to 12 years to demented seniors whose former selves had made advanced requests. Behind these again we have cohorts of persons who are no longer or have never been capable of consent.”

Schadenberg emphasized that the assumption people with mental illness have an irremediable condition is a hypothesis not universally agreed upon by psychiatrists. He said that many have stated “that is just not known” or “we can’t predict that.”

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He added that since the EPC began its advocacy for Bill C-218, supporters across the country have sent in letters detailing times when they underwent “significant mental illness and are so happy that MAiD for mental illness was not available at that time.”

Saba echoed Schadenberg’s point that “most psychiatrists cannot determine which patient has an irreversible condition.” He said “from a medical legal standpoint, those with mental disorders requesting euthanasia, the euphemism is called medical assistance in dying, cannot make a free and informed consent because the desire to die, in most cases, is a symptom of a mental illness such as depression."

Sheren lives with post-traumatic stress disorder, a traumatic brain injury, major depressive disorder and “according to doctors, a treatment resistant depression along with hearing loss."

She testified that when she became a combat veteran at 18 years old, she understood that she might end up dying for her country, but she “didn’t understand that one day my own government would quietly offer to help me do it.”

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“Behind closed doors, veterans are being offered medical assistance in dying,” said Sheren. “Not therapy, not recovery, not support and not help, but death.” 

During the previous parliament, a similar bill, C-314, advanced by now retired Conservative MP Ed Fast, was narrowly defeated at second reading by a 167-150 vote count. Conservatives and NDP voted in favour along with eight Liberal MPs. The rest of the governing Liberals and the entire Bloc Québécois voted against the bill.