Liberals introduce bill to bar MAID for mental illness

OTTAWA — The federal government has introduced legislation to bar people with mental illness from seeking medical assistance in dying.

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Justice Minister Sean Fraser announced plans earlier this month to make the change, along with an amendment to the Criminal Code that allows people who are at risk of losing their capacity to consent to assisted dying to make an advance request.

Advocates have long pushed for that change, arguing that people diagnosed with conditions like dementia and Alzheimer’s disease are forced to choose to end their lives early for fear that they will lose the capacity to consent to lethal injection.

The bill introduced on Tuesday will allow advance requests to be made in provinces that have a legislative regime of their own. Fraser told reporters in early October that the federal government will not force provinces to allow advance requests.

In order to be considered eligible for MAID by advance written request, the bill states that two separate medical practitioners must confirm the person meets the criteria that include being in a state of irreversible decline and having prepared the request with the help of a doctor or nurse practitioner.

The requests themselves need to set out the individual criteria under which a person would want their life to be ended, in “observable clinical manifestations.”

Fraser’s bill includes safeguards to ensure that people who make advance requests cannot be forced to end their lives if they have changed their minds, something that critics have warned could happen.

The law would prohibit MAID in cases where the person “demonstrates, by words, sounds or gestures, refusal or resistance” or if a medical practitioner or nurse practitioner doubts whether the person is trying to refuse. That does not include involuntary sounds or gestures that are a response to contact.

If that happens, another attempt cannot be made for at least 30 days.

Doctors and nurse practitioners who knowingly fail to comply with the requirements in the law and are found guilty of an offence could be subject to up to five years in prison.

So far, only Quebec has laws that permit advance requests. Alberta’s government has passed legislation that would prohibit advance requests.

The bill will need to be passed and come into effect before March 17, the date on which the current law will allow people with mental illness as a sole underlying condition to become eligible for MAID.

That was first proposed in changes made to the laws in 2021, but it’s been extremely controversial. In June, a parliamentary committee recommended against allowing people with mental illness to become eligible for MAID after hearing that there is no consensus within the medical community about what makes a mental illness irremediable.

More to come.

National Post

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