Gordon Friesen: No to Euthanasia for mental illness.

Gordon Friesen (Center)

Gordon Friesen - Parliamentary Press Gallery Speech for the Euthanasia Prevention Coalition in support of Bill C-218, the bill that will prevent euthanasia for mental illness alone, on October 28, 2025. Gordon's speech starts at the beginning. 

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My name is Gordon Friesen, I am President of the Euthanasia Prevention Coalition.

Today we are holding a Press Conference in support of Bill 218, advanced by Member Tamara Jansen, to reverse permission of euthanasia for mental illness alone, now set to begin in 2027.

Our take-away message is this:

No to Euthanasia for Mental Illness!

The MAID policy Canadians have received is not at all as promised. Maid was only to be for people who were dying, only for adults, and only for those who were truly able to choose.

Unfortunately, all of those promises have been broken.

Bill C-7, for example, did away with "reasonably foreseeable death".

But most important, is the expectation of real personal choice.

That is what fuels support for MAID: not that people believe any particular person should die-- but that they might, perhaps, themselves, make free, informed, competent, and adult choices.

Obviously, however, euthanasia for the mentally ill does not fit that description. For the symptoms of mental illness often make that sort of choice impossible.

Indeed, it was long assumed that all MAID patients would be carefully examined to rule out the influence of psychiatric disorder.

Unfortunately, such hopes ignore the perverse reality of presenting death as medical care.

The capacity we demand for medical consent has a much lower bar. And that is because medical treatment is understood to be a good --and even essential-- benefit, so that gaining patient consent should be as easy as possible.

For the mentally ill, this means that a person might be declared legally incompetent, even to spend their own money, but still be considered capable of consenting to a doctor's proposition of medical homicide.

Please notice, that I very deliberately say "consenting to a doctor's proposition of medical homicide".

For although ordinary people may still mistakenly believe that patients must themselves spontaneously request euthanasia.

That is not how medicine works.

It is the doctor who informs patients of available options, and then steers them towards whichever one he or she believes to be best.

Candidly speaking, it is this aggressive marketing of death as medical treatment which has turned a few hundred expected MAID cases into over sixteen thousand in 2024 alone.

And it also explains recent stories of people in acute psychiatric distress, desperately seeking institutional help, who are then professionally informed of their eligibility to be killed, in that place, by doctors.

Clearly, all of this is disastrous for the security of those persons afflicted with mental illness.

But from a wider perspective it also destroys all notion of MAID as an authentic patient choice.

Plainly, the precedent of medical homicide for mental illness opens a crucial gateway to other situations of questionable consent.

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 --in addition to demented seniors whose former selves had made advance requests.

And behind these again, we have other cohorts of persons who are no longer --or have never been-- capable of consent.

Any weakening of the choice principle places all of these at deadly risk.

The only certain way to prevent such appalling outcomes is to definitely close that pathway now.

For the sake of the mentally ill, and for that of larger society:

Let us say, together, No to Euthanasia for mental illness.

Join us in supporting Bill 218 for that purpose.

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Maintenant, j'aimerais m'adresser directement aux Députés Québecois et Québecoises

En 2021 j'ai eu l'honneur de participer aux consultations de La Commission spéciale sur l'évolution de la Loi concernant les soins de fin de vie. L'une des conclusions principales de cette démarche se lis ainsi:

"La Commission recommande de ne pas élargir l’accès à l’aide médicale à mourir aux personnes dont le seul problème médical est un trouble mental."

En conséquence, l'article 26 du loi ainsi modifiée stipule:

"un trouble mental autre qu’un trouble neurocognitif ne peut pas être une maladie pour laquelle une personne peut formuler une demande".

Je vous somme, donc, tous et toutes, de défendre cette politique non-partisane, telle qu'établie par l'Assemblée Nationale, et d'acceullir positivement le projet de loi 218.