Alex Schadenberg Executive Director, Euthanasia Prevention Coalition
Jocelyn Downie
Tristan Hopper reported for the National Post on April 9 that Jocelyn Downie, a long-time euthanasia academic told Canada's Parliamentary Committee on euthanasia, that is studying euthanasia for mental illness alone, that parliament must stick to the March 17, 2027 timeline and permit euthanasia based on mental illness alone. Downie threatened the committee by stating:
“What will happen, if there is an extension or an exclusion, is that people will die by suicide”
Downie is saying that the answer to suicidal ideation is suicide and people will die by suicide if they do not have access to euthanasia.
The threat that people who are denied euthanasia will die by suicide is a pressure tactic that is not true.
The Supreme Court of Canada accepted the suicide argument in Carter when it struck down Canada's laws that protected people from being killed by euthanasia, but the Supreme Court was wrong.
If the premise that people will die by suicide if euthanasia is not available to them is correct then Canada's suicide rate should have gone down after euthanasia became an option for people who are not terminally ill.
But Canada's suicide rate has increased.
According to the Government of Canada suicide mortality statistics, there were 3,978 recorded suicide deaths in Canada in 2016, the year that Canada legalized euthanasia. In 2021, the year that Canada expanded the euthanasia law to people who are not terminally ill, there were 3,927 recorded suicide deaths. In 2023, two years after extending euthanasia to people who are not terminally ill, there were 4,735 reported suicide deaths in Canada, representing a greater than 20% increase from 2021.
I am not arguing that Canada's increase in suicide deaths was directly related to Canada's expansion of euthanasia, but I am saying that if Jocelyn Downie was correct, the suicide rate should have decreased, whereas in fact it has significantly increased.
Canada has had a massive increase in deaths by euthanasia.
I
predict that in 2025, the increase in Canadian (MAiD) euthanasia deaths was
greater than 7% with the number of euthanasia deaths being approximately
17,700.
Clearly, there is no indication that the massive growth in Canadian euthanasia deaths has resulted in a lower rate of other suicides.
Suicide rates do not decrease in jurisdictions that have legalized euthanasia or assisted suicide.
in jurisdictions, such as Belgium and the Netherlands, where assisted death is legal, that the suicide rates have decreased. He then stated that there is no link between assisted death and the rate of suicide in jurisdictions where it is legal.
The problem with Senator Kutcher's statement was that he was absolutely wrong.
In the article I explain that in jurisdictions that have legalized euthanasia or assisted suicide, there are no jurisdictions, that over a long period of time, have experienced a decrease in suicide deaths.
Further to that, in February 2022 bio-ethicist David Albert Jones published an article explaining that: In Europe, suicides rise after ‘right-to-die’ is legalised. Jones provided a comparison between European countries that have legalized assisted dying and those that had not legalized it and found that countries that had legalized assisted dying experienced an increase in suicide rates compared to countries that had not legalized assisted dying who generally had a lessening of the suicide rate.
In other words, Downie is using a false argument to scare monger Members of Parliament into approving euthanasia for mental illness alone. Downie uses court decisions to uphold her position but the Justices are not suicide prevention experts and in fact are wrong in their assumption that legalizing euthanasia will prevent suicide.
Minimally speaking, legalizing euthanasia does not lead to a decrease in suicide rates and the data suggests that legalizing euthanasia or assisted suicide has a suicide contagion effect leading, long term, to higher suicide rates.
Canada may be the only country on earth where the healthcare system can sometimes help you die faster than it can help you heal. That should alarm people, but it doesn’t because our media its brainwashing you.
Instead, Canadians are being slowly conditioned to accept it and provinces like Quebec, Ontario and BC are drinking the kool aid, wiping their mouth and asking for more.
Here’s the the thing. This isn’t being done through legislation alone. It’s through the current government’s media push. Paid and bought by the Liberals.
A recent CTV story profiles a Canadian woman hoping to access Medical Assistance in Dying (MAID) for mental illness. The headline reassures readers: “It won’t be violent. I won’t be alone.” The tone is soft. Compassionate. Almost comforting. At first glance it feels empathetic. Human. Gentle.
But look closer and something else is happening, this is what abandonment looks like and stories like this are not just reporting. They are preparation. This is the slow drip I’ve been writing about for years. The frog in the boiling pot.
This is how societies normalize radical ideas. You don’t push the public into a moral shift all at once. You soften the ground. You tell personal stories, tug at th heart strings. “But grandma, Kelsi!” You highlight suffering. You frame the decision as brave and dignified, when it’s anything but then slowly, the public begins to see assisted death not as a tragedy or a failure of care, but as compassion. Let me be very clear, this is nothing more than a form of modern eugenics.
The article walks readers through one person’s suffering in intimate detail, but it avoids asking the uncomfortable questions responsible journalism should raise. Instead, the language gently reassures the reader. It won’t be violent. She won’t be alone. The emphasis is on dignity, control, and compassion.
That framing matters, for several reason and when media coverage consistently presents assisted death through the lens of empathy and personal relief, the public begins to associate the act itself with kindness rather than consequence.
What’s missing is just as important as what’s included. There is little discussion about recovery rates for severe depression. Little exploration of how suicidal thinking fluctuates. Little examination of the long history of suicide prevention that treats these impulses as crises to intervene in—not requests to formalize.
There is almost no attention paid to the broader system failing people long before they reach this point, failed drugs, therapy, SSRI’s, community and support. When stories like this are told without that context, they do something subtle but powerful. They normalize the idea that some suffering lives may simply be beyond help.
That is not a neutral editorial choice.
It is narrative shaping, and CTV, CBC, GLOBAL and other “mainstream” media and Canada are known for this. Let’s say the part that too many people are afraid to say out loud. MENTAL ILLNESS IS NOT TERMINAL.
Depression, PTSD, trauma, and suicidal thinking can be brutal. They can make people believe there is no way out. I know that reality personally. I’m a combat veteran. I’ve lived through PTSD, a traumatic brain injury, hearing loss, and major depressive disorder. There were periods where the darkness was overwhelming and the idea of continuing felt impossible. I thought of suicide for over a decade. Every waking minute.
Those are exactly the kinds of conditions people are now discussing as justification for assisted death.
And yet I HEALED, contrary to the death cult’s narrative and hope I’m sure. Not overnight. Not easily. But I rebuilt my life, day by day. Breath by breath, moment by moment. I never gave up, when quitting was the easy thing to do. That’s the part of the story that rarely gets told in these conversations.
Because if someone like me had been offered death during my lowest point, I am very certain I would NOT be here today. How many others would be gone too, coerced into an early death by sick people.
Recovery from mental illness is not theoretical. It happens every single day. People stabilize. They find treatment that works. They build purpose again. They reconnect to life in ways they never thought possible. I’ve not only seen people do, I’ve helped them get there because it truly takes a village.
But when a society begins offering death as a medical solution to psychological suffering, it risks cutting those futures short. What also rarely gets mentioned is the system surrounding this debate.
Canada is in the middle of a mental health crisis. Therapy is expensive and often inaccessible. Psychiatric care can take months, at a minimum to access. Veterans struggle to get consistent treatment, if any. Housing instability, addiction, trauma, and poverty compound mental illness across the country.
In other words, help is often difficult to find, to say the least but death is becoming easier.
Canadians can spend months trying to access psychiatric care. But once someone enters the MAID system, the machinery of the state can move with stunning efficiency. In some cases, the process can unfold in a matter of hours.
Think about that. SAME DAY DEATH CARE.
We have built a healthcare system where the bureaucracy can move faster for death than it does for treatment. Thats an uncomfortable fact the media and health cults don’t want you to realize.
For decades, if someone told a doctor they wanted to die because of mental suffering, the response was immediate intervention. Crisis teams. Hospitalization. Suicide prevention. The entire point of mental health care was to stop someone from acting on a moment of despair. Simply put a 72 hr hold to protect yourself, from yourself.
Now we are debating whether the same healthcare system should sometimes agree with that impulse and formalize it. That contradiction should stop this conversation cold yet it doesn’t.
Instead, the public is being slowly acclimatized to the idea. One sympathetic story at a time. One emotional narrative at a time. The tone softens. The language shifts. The moral boundary moves.
This is the slow drip, this is the psy op everyone seems to be missing. The deeper ethical questions rarely make the headlines. Who decides when suffering is “irremediable”? I argue Dr’s who are just as sick.
How many treatments must someone try before society agrees their life is no longer worth living? Apparently days to weeks, we don’t give anyone a fighting chance.
What happens when someone’s despair is driven not by an untreatable illness, but by poverty, isolation, trauma, or lack of care? These are not philosophical hypotheticals. These are real decisions that will affect the most vulnerable people in this country.
There is also a deeper question that almost no one in this debate seems willing to ask. Who told us we were ever promised control over how we exit this world?
At some point we began to act as if death should be scheduled, managed, and optimized like any other life decision. But no one promised us that kind of control. Life has never worked that way and it shouldn’t now.
What we do know is this moments of despair do not define the entire arc of a human life regardless of what Dr’s are telling you now. Suicidality, depression, trauma, and mental illness can feel permanent when you are inside them. They lie to you. They convince you there is no future worth waiting for. They are the dark voice. But those conditions do not have to mean death.
I am living proof of that, and I'm damn proud of it too.
A country that cannot reliably provide treatment, housing, therapy, and long-term mental health care—but can reliably provide assisted death—is sending a message about which lives are worth fighting for.
I lived through PTSD, traumatic brain injury, hearing loss, and major depressive disorder. These are exactly the kinds of conditions people are getting ready to be killed for.
All or nothing: medical homicide as psychiatric treatment
Gordon Friesen
By Gordon Friesen President, Euthanasia Prevention Coalition
When medical homicide is debated, the question always revolves around a balance between the (alleged) needs of that small number, who wish to die, and those of larger society, to protect others from the dangers.
In Canada it was judicially decided (wrongly in my opinion) that an 'absolute' (or 'categorical') ban was not warranted ('Carter vs Canada').
Pro-death cultists are now attempting to replicate that reasoning in the case of medical homicide for mental disorders alone. But this case will be much more difficult to make. For two things have changed in the meantime:
1) Mental illness presents a completely different context from earlier assumptions surrounding end-of-life euthanasia.
And,
2) We now possess a decade of experience, of deep social harms which were largely unsuspected when 'Carter' was first decided.
As for the first point, psychiatric homicide runs afoul of the 'irremediable condition' requirement of Canadian euthanasia. For no one can determine when psychiatric disorders are incurable. Moreover, it also contravenes the basic understanding that euthanasia will (always) be the result of a fully voluntary, informed, and capable decision.
Death-cult apologists do not entirely contest these points. However, in keeping with their all-or-nothing "no categorical exclusion" playbook, they would like to state this question more narrowly: as whether any person, with any mental disorder, in any circumstance, might ever display proper decisional capacity (or irremediable condition).
Unfortunately, however, to frame the conversation in this way, involves pretending their adversaries actually believe otherwise. In the recent debate with Maid-in-Canada, for example, such was their immediate response to our central messaging, to the effect that the symptoms of mental illness often make that sort of choice impossible:
“He (Friesen) tries to soften this by saying that mental illness often makes that sort of choice impossible, but his position seems clear: he seems to believe it is self-evident that people with mental illnesses cannot make these kinds of serious decisions.”
And so it is that the authors create a completely fanciful portrait, of my thinking, which they may then reject as "categorically false.”
Sadly, MIC continue with this charade, also, in portraying the meaning of third party references. They notably use one (and only one) phrase, without context, to dismiss the very real capacity concerns shown by the Canadian Association of Suicide Prevention:
“MAiD and suicide can, at least in principle, be distinguished”.
This snippet, they say, shows that CASP does not support my (supposed) denial of all decisional capacity among the mentally ill. However, let us explore the full thought of CASP on this crucial ‘overlap’ of medical homicide and common suicidality:
"there may be little to no overlap between MAiD and what we traditionally understand as suicide in those people seeking MAiD at the end of life. In contrast, the risk of overlap increases precipitously for those seeking MAiD for chronic, non-life threatening conditions and, in particular, for mental disorders."
Although we may disagree with the implied trivialization of medical homicide at the end of life, we strongly agree with the conclusion ultimately reached: that the serious (and generally admitted) capacity problem, of differentiating "rational" desires from common suicidality, creates a much larger potential, for social harm, when the subject is medical homicide for mental illness, than if that problem is considered in the original end-of-life context, or even that of "grievous and irremediable (physical) condition". Hence the rationale for a complete prohibition (in this more limited circumstance) becomes that much stronger also.
Practically speaking, this means that Bill C-218, for mental illness alone, stands a far greater chance of surviving constitutional challenge, than did previous law prohibiting all forms of consensual homicide.
But if that were not enough, let us consider the following, from the same source:
“Regarding the capacity for a patient to consent to MAiD, the very nature of mental disorders may impair the decision-making capacity of the patient. Those suffering from a mental disorder are routinely encouraged to avoid making major decisions while in the midst of their suffering. The decision of ending one’s life prematurely is enormous and grave and must not be made while in the throes of mental illness.”
There is not much ambiguity in the meaning of that paragraph.
The capacity/suicidality problem clearly constitutes an extremely serious motive for prohibiting the use of homicide as a treatment for mental illness.
No medical homicide for mental illness. Support Bill C-218
Father attempted to prevent the euthanasia death of his daughter based on her mental health.
Alex Schadenberg Executive Director, Euthanasia Prevention Coalition
Reuters reported on February 20, 2026 that a woman who become disabled after an attempted suicide has been approved to be killed by euthanasia. The Reuters report states:
According
to legal rulings, the woman, who is suffering from a psychiatric
illness, attempted suicide several times by overdosing on medication
before jumping from a fifth‑floor window in October 2022, an act that
left her paraplegic and in chronic pain.
In
July 2024, a specialised expert committee in her region, Catalonia,
approved her request for euthanasia. The procedure was scheduled for
August 2, 2024, but her father has blocked it ever since.
On Friday 20 February, Spain’s Constitutional Court rejected an appeal by her father to prevent the woman from ending her life by euthanasia.
The case will likely be referred to the European Court of Human Rights.
This case will determine if a person who needs treatment for mental health and suicidal ideation can be approved to be killed by euthanasia.
The woman qualified for euthanasia based on her physical disability. The Spanish law does not require the person to have a terminal diagnosis. Nonetheless, she became disabled from her attempted suicide that her father has argued was based on her mental health issues.
Spanish euthanasia deaths increased by almost 30% in 2024.
The Spanish euthanasia report that was published in December 2025 indicated that 426 people were killed by
euthanasia in Spain in 2024, a 27.5% increase from 334 people in 2023.
The
total number of people who have been poisoned to death by euthanasia increased by almost 48% since 2022, the first full year after legalization.
Euthanasia is an act whereby a
person who is deemed eligible is intentionally poisoned to death by a
medical practitioner.
More articles on this topic:
Spanish euthanasia deaths increase by 27.5% (Read).
Spanish courts will consider a second case challenging a euthanasia approval (Read).
Death should never be a substitute for adequate care and support.
Alex Schadenberg Executive Director, Euthanasia Prevention Coalition
The International Association for Suicide Prevention (IASP) published a statement on assisted suicide and euthanasia in 2025. Considering the silence by many suicide prevention groups, the statement of the IASP is important. The statement says:
There is a strong potential for overlap or equivalence between what we consider to be suicide and euthanasia and assisted suicide (EaAS), particularly when EaAS is provided not at the end of life and instead to those with chronic conditions for whom death is not imminent. Research and clinical experience indicate that when a person has an irremediable illness or life situation, steps can still be taken to remediate the suffering and reasons motivating their desire to die. Even when it may convincingly appear to be hopeless, premature deaths can be prevented. IASP’s position is that:
1. Jurisdictions considering legalising and/or expanding the availability of assisted suicide and euthanasia should engage meaningfully with suicide prevention experts and/or organisations to carefully weigh concerns about overlap between what is being contemplated and what we usually consider to be suicide. Any such concerns should have a prominent impact on decision-making.
2. Jurisdictions that legalise and regulate assisted suicide and euthanasia must ensure that other means to alleviate a person’s physical and emotional suffering, including provision of better psychosocial and material supports, mental health services and palliative care, are systematically offered and provided. Death should never be a substitute for adequate care and support.
The IASP statement further suggests:
All persons who are seeking to end their lives have the same access to high quality suicide prevention assessments and interventions.
All people and organizations who work in suicide prevention must to their utmost to provide the same level of quality help and interventions to all people who express a wish to die.
All people in suicide prevention should be provided with end-of-life and hospice/palliative care training.
The statement continues:
4. IASP encourages and supports research on the relationship between suicide and assisted suicide and euthanasia, and research on best practices in suicide prevention assessments and interventions with persons who are suffering from irremediable medical conditions, as well as ethical standards for suicide prevention with these populations.
5. IASP is concerned that because of the inability, documented in current research, to predict which persons with a mental illness have a poor or hopeless prognosis, and which will substantially improve, with or without treatment, we should not allow access to EaAS for persons whose suffering is solely associated with a mental illness.
This IASP statement is important since the death lobby argues that there is a clear difference between requests for suicide as compared to requests for assisted suicide and/or euthanasia.
In March 2021, (MAiD) euthanasia was extended to people who are not terminally ill but rather living with a grievous and irremediable medical conditions in Canada. Many of these euthanasia deaths appear to be requests for death based on suicidal ideation. Instead of receiving suicide prevention or mental health supports, these people become approved to be killed by euthanasia. This is a form of abandonment, not a "freedom" to choose death.
Hopefully the International Association for Suicide Prevention (IASP) statement will lead to legislatures, world-wide, rejecting the legalization of euthanasia and/or assisted suicide.
Speech by Tamara Jansen MP (Cloverdale - Langley City) in the House of Commons on December 5, 2025 in support of Bill C-218, the bill that she sponsored, to amend the law to prevent MAiD for Mental Illness alone in Canada.
Moved that Bill C-218, An Act to amend the Criminal Code (medical assistance in dying), be read the second time and referred to a committee.
Mr.
Speaker, I want the members to imagine someone's son. He is in his forties
and life has worn him down. He lives with a painful illness that leaves
him sick, exhausted and often unable to leave the house. On top of that,
he struggles with addictions, depression and anxiety, which have taken
more from him than anyone can see from the outside. Some days, he can
barely hold it together. He relies on his family for a place to live,
food and help getting through the week. They are doing their best, and
he is doing his best, but the weight of it is crushing.
One day, he finally meets a psychiatrist. He goes, hoping that this might finally be the start of real help. His addictions still have not been treated, and his mental health care has not truly begun. He is vulnerable, scared and hanging on by a thread.
At that appointment, instead of being offered a plan to get him stable, MAID is raised as an option. The assessment moves ahead, and before he ever receives proper support for his mental health or addictions, he is approved. His MAID provider is the one who drives him to the place where his life is ended. This is someone's son who needed help, not a final exit.
Believe it or not, this actually happened here in Canada, and this is where we are headed if we do not act. Unless this Parliament chooses a different path, Canada will allow MAID for people whose only condition is mental illness. That means men and women struggling with depression, trauma or overwhelming psychological pain could be steered toward death by a system that too often cannot offer timely treatment, consistent follow-up or even basic support. This is why I brought forward Bill C-218, the right to recover act. It is simple. It asks Parliament to stop, consider what we have learned and act responsibly before people are irretrievably harmed.
I often think of my grandparents, who immigrated here after World War II with very little. They chose Canada because it was a place where people had endless opportunities to better themselves, where neighbours watched out for each other and communities worked in unison to make a better life for all. They built a Canada where the vulnerable were cared for and the less privileged in society were valued and treated with equal care. Those fundamental values attracted millions of immigrants over the years.
Today, many Canadians fear we are losing those values. Canadians themselves remain some of the most compassionate people anyone will ever meet, but our system is overwhelmed, stretched thin and unable to meet the needs of people who are suffering.
When people fall through the cracks, the easy temptation is to accept that failure is inevitable. When that happens, people facing mental illness can end up alone, waiting months, or sometimes years, for specialized treatment, and when help does not come, they lose hope. That moment of hopelessness should never be treated as an opportunity for the state to end their lives through MAID.
When the House last debated MAID, mental illness was not a part of the core discussion. It was added in a last-minute Senate amendment to Bill C-7. The implications were not fully considered or understood by the House.
Since then, we have learned a lot more. Psychiatrists across Canada, including the chairs of psychiatry at all 17 medical schools, have told us plainly that there is no reliable way to predict when a mental illness is irremediable, which is a requirement in the MAID law. People get worse, but they also get better, and most do. There is no test, scan or clinical tool that can reliably tell us that someone will never recover. All people deserve the opportunity to get better. No one should be encouraged to give up on themselves.
As legislators, we need to listen to what so many medical professionals are telling us, which is how hard it is to distinguish between suicidal ideation and MAID. The feelings behind them, such as hopelessness, loneliness, fear and the belief that one is a burden, are the same. For decades, clinicians have understood that, when someone feels hopeless or sees themselves in a very negative way, it can look like they are thinking clearly, that they are rational, even when their judgment is clouded by despair.
In 2021, most of us did not have the evidence we now have about how MAID assessment functions in the real world or the specific dangers of expanding MAID to mental illness. We now know there is no reliable way to determine when a mental illness is truly irremediable. Suicide prevention experts, including the Canadian Association for Suicide Prevention, warn that how we talk about these issues shapes the choices people make. Suggesting that death is a solution to suffering undermines hope. It puts people at real risk.
The expansion of MAID to mental illness forces Canada into a huge contradiction. On one hand, we invest in suicide prevention. We train professionals to intervene, listen and pull back people from the edge. On the other hand, with the expansion of MAID, we would invite those same vulnerable people to consider state-facilitated death.
We must ask, who receives suicide prevention and who is guided toward MAID? If a person suffering from depression calls a crisis line tonight, do we encourage them to hold on or do we quietly redirect them to an assessor? What principle decides the answer? What medical test? What ethical standard? There is none. That is because the very feelings that drive someone to seek MAID, hopelessness, despair or the belief that they are a burden, are the same signals that every suicide prevention worker is trained to treat as a cry for help.
We would never tell a struggling teenager that their wish to die is rational. We would not tell a grieving spouse that their darkest moment is a reasonable exit point. We would reach out. We would support them. We would insist that their lives still matter. Why should that change simply because despair is given a different label? When someone feels worthless, our duty is not to agree with them. It is to stand with them until the light returns. Canada must decide: Are suicidal citizens people in need of protection or candidates for state-sanctioned death? We cannot pretend that they are both. Besides all this is the fact that we already know the current safeguards are failing.
Let us be absolutely clear about what an expansion of MAID to mental illness would mean. If Canada cannot protect vulnerable people under the current rules, then expanding eligibility to those whose very illness clouds judgment, hope and decision-making will lead directly to preventable deaths. We are already witnessing cases where safeguards fail, where capacity is misjudged and where people are assessed in moments of confusion, exhaustion or pressure. If the system cannot uphold basic protections now, it will not and cannot protect those suffering from severe psychological distress. An expansion would be reckless.
The evidence is already in front of us. A recent article about Ontario's MAID death review committee's findings lays out, in plain and troubling terms, cases that would worry every Canadian. They describe a man who had cancer. I will call him Bill. Earlier in his illness, he had briefly mentioned MAID, as frightened patients tend to do. By the time he was assessed, he was delirious, confused and heavily sedated. His own medical team made it clear that he no longer had the capacity to make major decisions, yet a MAID assessor shook him awake, took the faint motion of lips as consent, withheld sedation, obtained a rushed virtual second opinion and ended his life that same day. Bill was not stable. Bill was not capable. He did not understand what was happening.
In another case, a woman, whom we will call Margaret, wanted palliative care. She said so the day before her death, but she did not qualify for hospice. Her husband, worn down by caregiver exhaustion, arranged for an urgent MAID assessment instead. The day before she had told him she wanted to die with proper palliative support, but the next day two assessments were rushed through. Her final wishes were overshadowed by the strain of a caregiver who could no longer cope.
Another woman, whom we will call Alice, was living with advanced dementia and unable to communicate her wishes in any meaningful way. Her family brought MAID forward twice with minimal documentation, little clarity and no clear expression of consent, yet she was approved.
All of these examples were drawn from the auditor's report. These are stories about real people, who are family members, friends, neighbours and fellow citizens, the people to whom we owe a duty of care. They demonstrate that vulnerable Canadians are already at risk under the current MAID regime. People who are confused, pressured, exhausted or unable to communicate are slipping through the safeguards that were supposed to protect them. If safeguards fail for patients with physical illness, where assessing capacity is clear and verifiable, what will happen when the only condition is a mental illness which, by definition, clouds judgment and hope? To offer death at that moment will place some of the most vulnerable people in this country directly in harm's way.
Today, a person deemed unable to manage their finances must undergo rigorous capacity assessments, interviews, documentation, expert review, collateral information and verification because we recognize the risk of exploitation, yet for MAID, a situation of life or death, a brief conversation can suffice, with no thorough evaluation, and when the safeguards fail, there seem to be few consequences. We now live in a country where we protect bank accounts better than we protect a human life.
We also know of families across Canada that were deeply shaken by how MAID was carried out for a loved one. They describe decisions that felt rushed and were influenced by poverty, loneliness or a lack of access to proper treatment, not by a calm and informed choice. These experiences are warnings from the very people who lived through the consequences.
Canadians are uneasy. Polls show a clear majority do not support MAID for mental illness alone. Provinces are asking Ottawa to reconsider. They are calling for a stop. Quebec, one of the most permissive MAID jurisdictions in the world, has banned it by law.
International human rights experts have raised the alarm, including the UN Committee on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, which has urged Canada to step back. It warns that our trajectory risks discriminating against people with disabilities and mental illness and recommends repealing this expansion entirely. This is what Bill C-218 would do.
We must remember a crucial truth, which is that recovery from mental illness is not rare, but common. Time and again, people who once felt utterly hopeless have rebuilt their lives once they received proper care and stable support. Every one of us knows someone, whether it was a neighbour, a colleague or a family member, who walked through a very dark season and is now grateful to be alive.
These stories matter because they show us what is at stake. Sadly, that is not true in every case, but there is no reliable way to know in advance who will recover and who will not. There is no test, no scan, no certainty. I respectfully suggest that, when someone's judgment is clouded by psychological distress, our duty is to offer treatment, protection and time, not an irreversible decision based on guesswork.
If MAID is expanded, we will be forced into an impossible paradox. A suicidal person calling a crisis line is urged to hold on, yet if they request MAID, that same despair may be treated as justification for death. This is why Bill C-218 is necessary. It would stop the 2027 expansion to mental illness because the evidence cannot support it and the safeguards cannot sustain it. Vulnerable Canadians are already at risk. Expanding eligibility now is reckless. A strong country does not turn its back on those who suffer, but believes in their future and gives them time and care to heal.
I urge every member in the House to support Bill C-218 so Canada would remain a nation that protects the vulnerable, offers treatment before despair and gives every person the chance to recover. Let us take this responsibility seriously. Let us listen to the warnings of those who are assessing the failures in the system. Let us listen to the families who have lived through the consequences of MAID and to those who survived mental illness and rebuilt their lives. Let us remember the kind of country we claim to be, one that protects the vulnerable and gives people the time, care and dignity they need to heal.
You may also want to read Tamara Jansen's speech in the House of Commons on Bill C-218 (Link).
Speech by Andrew Lawton MP (Elgin - St. Thomas - London South) in the House of Commons on December 5, 2025 in support of Bill C-218, the bill that is sponsored by Tamara Jansen MP (Cloverdale - Langley City) amending the law to prevent MAiD for Mental Illness alone in Canada.
Mr. Speaker, it is a great honour to rise and speak to Bill C-218.
In less than a week (December 9, 2010), it will be 15 years since I almost lost my life to suicide. I overdosed. I was in the hospital for seven weeks. For much of it, I was on life support and had to be resuscitated multiple times. Over Christmas, my parents did not know if they would have me as their son, moving forward. It was the culmination of a very dark time in my life that spanned many years, a time in which I felt at multiple times, although not as seriously as I did that horribly dark and sad December day in 2010, that I would be better off dead than alive.
There are many reasons I am so proud to be standing here in this chamber, but one of them is knowing where I have been and where I came from and the fact that there was a time in my life when I never in a million years would have believed that I could ever have the life I have now: a career that I am proud of, an amazing wife whom I love so dearly, these tremendous colleagues and friends I work with every day, and this trust that has been placed in me by the people I represent. None of that would have been possible had I been successful when I attempted to end my life.
I think of my own experience and the experience of many others like me when I reflect on the fact that in just 15 months' time, someone who was in the place I was in 15 years ago will be able to have not only the state's permission but the state's help to end their life by suicide. In March 2027, the criteria for medical assistance in dying are expanding, so someone with only a mental illness, with no physical ailment whatsoever, will be eligible for MAID.
This is a profound expansion and a fundamental inversion of the message that we have spent so much money and so much airtime and so much effort and energy telling Canadians for years, through countless campaigns aimed at ending the stigma surrounding suicide; through more programming, funding and resources to support people with mental illness; and through campaigns telling people that they are better off alive, that they do have a future. They are efforts that we all extend in our own lives to those around us to give messages of hope to those who need it. To put a fine point on this, and to make it personal, because it is personal, if the laws that are coming into force in 15 months had been there 15 years ago, I would probably be dead right now. I say that with full gratitude that I am not.
I did not want to extend a cry for help. I actually had access to resources and treatment. I had a support system. I had a family who loved me. I had these privileges that so many others who struggle with mental illness did not have. Even with all of those available to me, I felt like there was no future. The proverbial light at the end of the tunnel did not exist. I did not want to get better. It was not that I had not tried; I had not tried enough, clearly. However, I felt like I had done my time. I felt like I had put in enough effort to try to get better and when I did not, I had made my decision that I was going to end it. It was not impulsive; it was quite rational, actually. I decided it weeks out. Believe it or not, as silly as it sounds, I had it on my calendar, and I scheduled the day because I had appointments and meetings before it that I did not want to miss, as though that makes any sense at all, as though it would matter if I missed a meeting, given that I was planning on not sticking around.
This is how, when a person is struggling with mental illness, as I was so very seriously, it plays tricks on them. By design, a mental illness is a distortion of the person's ability to see clearly and think clearly about what they are in the midst of. It clouds their judgment. If I had ever gone to a health care worker and said, “I am planning to end my life,” they would have not just a moral but a legal obligation to stop me. They would have legal authority to detain me, because that is how sacrosanct it is that people have a right to recover, that they have a right to live and that medical practitioners must do no harm and protect them from harming themselves. We have a duty to help people.
I talk about my own story, and I have heard so many others like it. After my colleague from Cloverdale—Langley City introduced her bill, I launched the “I got better” campaign, in which I shared my testimony and invited Canadians to share their own. I would like to share some of those in the House today.
A lawyer from here in Ottawa said that they wondered if they would have used MAID if it had been available when they were in their darkest days, or if they would use it in the dark days yet to come.
A man reached out and said he struggles with personal family issues and mental illness. He has very bad days. He has tried attempting suicide before, and he is worried that he will not be stopped in the future if he has more of those dark days and MAID is available to him.
On a more positive note, a woman who was in an abusive relationship for 22 years and wanted to die said, “If MAID had been around then, I would not be here now, and I am damn happy it was not.” I will ask members to pardon the unparliamentary language. She continued, saying, “I am happy now. I have had a fantastic career caring for seniors. I have grandbabies and kids I love. I have a wonderful husband now who means the world to me.”
Another woman said she wanted to end her life many times, but looking back, she is so happy she has a life now where she is happier than she ever was before.
I will share one more about a woman who described two years of agony, with damage to her liver, hospitalizations, dozens of failed medications and a compilation of diagnoses without any real clarity, but she was given a second chance. She had been labelled as chronically unstable and told she had a poor prognosis, was unable to thrive independently and would likely revolve through the system for the rest of her life. She had attempted suicide several times.
There was one doctor who would not give up on her. As she said, “Recovery takes one person, not one pill. It takes one person who believes in you and forces uncomfortable treatment onto you for the sake of the future life that's awaiting you.” That woman went to university, became a social worker to help others, is happily married and, more importantly, is happy.
None of these stories could ever be guaranteed if we were to do what the government is doing in 15 months, which is to license giving up on people at their most vulnerable moments, at their darkest and lowest points.
Of those who die by suicide, 90% are people who have diagnosable mental illness. Physicians have testified before Parliament and its committees that suicide is often contemplated and planned over a long period of time by people who would very easily, as I am confident I would have, go to a doctor to make a rational, logical case that they have tried all of the treatments and they believe that they are better off dead than alive. There was a consensus among psychiatric experts who have testified and spoken about this elsewhere that there is no clear way to separate suicidal ideation as a symptom from a request for a health care practitioner to help in ending one's life.
Dr. John Maher testified before Parliament that 7% of those who attempt suicide die by suicide. That means that 93% of people who, at one or multiple points, want to end their life eventually get over that. The success rate of MAID is 100%. By design, this is a policy that will give up on people.
There are very few things in this chamber that we can say are genuinely life-and-death issues. This is one of them. A few weeks ago we saw that, in 2024, MAID accounted for 5.1% of the deaths in Canada. That is a 1,520% increase over 2016 when it became legal. We are seeing a massive expansion to people who, in the vast majority of cases, will get better. About 50% to 60% of people with mental illness will actually recover with no treatment, and that number is even higher for people who do have treatment available.
I would not be here today had I been successful. I would not be here today had I not gotten over the darkest, worst feelings of my life, which anyone could encounter. That is something I believe needs to be understood by those who believe this is an abstract question of legal theory and legal rights. These are real people. There are faces to this. If Bill C-218 does not pass, people will die. We have a right and a duty to stand up for those who need it. I will be proudly supporting this bill, and I thank my colleague so much for introducing it.
Back in 1993, in my first anti-euthanasia piece, I warned that once assisted suicide became normalized, it would soon be conjoined with organ harvesting “as a plum to society.” What I didn’t expect was for the leaders of the organ-transplant medical sector to applaud.
I thought they would understand that conjoining organ procurement with euthanasia would create an incentive to be killed. That has happened more than once, and yet organ-transplant and other medical journals continue to publish studies supportive of kill and harvest (my term).
The Journal of Hepatology published an article that cheers the process of performing a liver transplant with the organ of a person who received a lethal jab in Canada. From “Utilization of Liver Grafts Obtained After Medical Assistance in Dying” (citations omitted):
In most cases, the eligible patient is admitted to the hospital, and the MAiD medications are administered in a designated care room – most often a private room in the intensive care unit – in the presence of family or friends, according to the patient’s wishes. The medications are administered intravenously and, although some slight variations exist, most commonly include: 1) heparin at a dose of 1,000 units per kg body weight; 2) benzodiazepine (i.e. midazolam) to induce relaxation; 3) propofol to induce deep coma which also ensures that the patient is fully unconscious and does not experience any discomfort; 4) neuromuscular blockers (i.e. rocuronium) which leads to cessation of spontaneous breathing and, subsequently, death…The patient is then transported to the operating room for the organ procurement. Throughout the process, no member of the procurement team is involved in the MAiD procedure.
Let’s understand what is happening here. A patient becomes suicidal and asks to be killed. He or she is not offered suicide prevention but instead becomes objectified and viewed as a potential organ farm.
This should be profoundly upsetting to the medical sector as it comes very close to violating a corollary to the dead donor rule (only the dead can donate vital organs) that prohibits killing patients for their body parts. To get around that, apologists for conjoining euthanasia and harvesting pretend that the two events are separate.
But are they really? Canadian and other media have made a big deal out of the potential to be killed and donate. People are being “educated” about that potential all the time — one might even say persuaded.
And indeed, in some cases, donating organs can become a strong incentive for being killed, as happened with a 16-year-old brain cancer patient in Belgium. From the glowing story in Le Soir:
She is fifteen years old for a few more days, her eyes sparkling, full of life. . . . It’s summer, the weather is very nice on the heights of Liège, the sun is cascading on its bed. Eva will celebrate her birthday on Sunday – sixteen years old! – and she has long and patiently chosen her gift: she is going to die. . . .
Yes, she wants to die, without too much delay. But not just any old way. She will leave this world through the great door, that of generous souls. She wants to give her heart, her liver, her kidneys, her lungs, she wants to give her body to everyone who needs it here on earth, since this life didn’t really want her and she reluctantly decided to go up there.
Understand that the timing of that kill and harvest was dictated by the desire to donate.
But the patient gave her consent, you may say. Sorry, if consent is all that matters, it opens the door to all kinds of horrors. A civilized society that protects the vulnerable should not countenance them.
Back to the medical journal article:
The favorable results [successful grafts], relative to DCD-III, justify careful discussion of organ donation with individuals seeking MAiD, provided that core ethical principles of autonomy, beneficence, non-maleficence, and justice are strictly upheld, along with rigorous safeguards. Liver donation following MAiD has the potential to expand the donor pool and help meet the growing clinical demand for organs.
If stillborn children
could inspire one of the most-loved children’s books in the twentieth
century, then maybe a grandpa with dementia will inspire one of the best
stories in the twenty-first.
Amanda Achtman
By Amanda Achtman
When I was growing up in the 1990s, there was a children’s book that my mother read to me so many times that I can still hear the sing-song cadence with which she read the refrain. That book is Love You Forever by the American-born Canadian author Robert Munsch. One of the most-loved children’s authors of all time, his books have sold an astounding 87 million copies.
Love You Forever begins with a mother rocking her newborn as she sings:
“I’ll love you forever / I’ll like you for always / As long as I’m living / my baby you’ll be.”
As the child grows, he causes his mother all manner of frustrations. But no matter what he does or how big he gets, she always goes into his room at night, picks him up, and rocks him, singing the same lullaby. Eventually, the mother grows old and sick and calls her son to visit her. She is so sick that she is unable to sing the lullaby that has been the lifelong expression of her love. And so her son sings it to her tenderly, revising the last lines to say,
“As long as I’m living my Mommy you’ll be.”
It is a touching story of the natural circle of life and of the unconditional love for which we are made. This is one reason why many Canadians are shocked that the book’s author, of all people, is saying he wants a doctor to end his life by euthanasia. In a recent piece for The New York Times, Katie Engelhart has written a profile of Robert Munsch titled, “When Dementia Steals the Imagination of a Children’s Book Writer.” The article pays homage to Munsch’s creative process. He would tell stories to children at schools and events, and workshop the stories in real time based on the children’s reactions. Sometimes he would incorporate their spontaneous outbursts into the published versions of these stories. Engelhart tells us that Munsch often stayed with host families of schoolchildren “at first because he couldn’t afford hotel rooms, but later because he found that families were a good source of stories.” She pays tribute to Munsch’s insistence on retaining the names of children on whom he occasionally based his stories “because one of his rules was that if he made up a story about a real child, the child ‘owned’ the story.” Many of Munsch’s books were inspired by the real-life kids he met and by the thousands of pieces of fan mail he received from his young and imaginative readers.
His national legacy is, first and foremost, as a storyteller. Yet Munsch has the humility and transparency to admit his serious struggles with loss and grief, mental illness, and addiction. “I have worked hard to overcome my problems, and I have done my best. I have attended twelve-step recovery meetings for more than 25 years,” Munsch wrote in a note to parents on his personal website. “My mental health and addiction problems are not a secret to my friends and family. They have been a big support to me over the years, and I would not have been able to do this without their love and understanding.”
Much of this had been previously reported, for example, in a Toronto Life article from 2010 and on various news programs. He spoke candidly about his depression and suicidal ideation, confessing, “I didn’t have any friends. My career was eating my life.” At his wife’s insistence, Munsch began seeing a psychiatrist, particularly since his grandfather had died by suicide. It has been a tumultuous life to which we are barely privy: a life of overcoming obstacles in the hope of making a difference in the lives of the people around him.
Engelhart’s article then fixates on what Munsch can no longer do. He can no longer ride a bike, drive a car, and, particularly cruelly for an author, he can no longer read. Like the mother in his classic story, he himself has become old and sick. But, unlike her, he now is tempted to seek state-sponsored suicide.
To schedule his death at the hands of a physician would contradict the message of unconditional love that he shared all those years ago, a message that resonated with hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions, of children and parents. But it would also contradict the support and understanding with which, thankfully, he was met throughout his life. When he faced depression and suicidal ideation, he got a psychiatrist. When he struggled with drugs and alcohol, he joined Narcotics and Alcoholics Anonymous. After he lost two children, he and his wife welcomed three through adoption. But now that he is elderly and asking for euthanasia, what is on offer? Why, only now, should there not be any antidote?
Engelhart does not tell us what his wife, children, or grandchildren think about his decision. However, one daughter has since spoken out, informing the media that Munsch is not dying imminently and that the news that he was considering MAiD is not new since he discussed this with journalists four years ago upon receiving diagnoses of dementia and Parkinson’s.
Now, in The New York Times interview, he is admitting his deepening insecurities over having dementia, expressing his fear about becoming “a turnip” or “a lump.” The request for medical assistance in dying (MAiD) is a cry of the heart concerning self-worth and lovability. Now that he can no longer tell stories, which had always been such a key part of his identity, he is shaken and vulnerable. The request for euthanasia betrays a fundamental lack of self-esteem.
But his stories did not only come from his own genius; they came from others, including from the tiniest and weakest. In fact, his most famous book of all was actually inspired by the two children that he lost. On his personal website, Munsch’s biography says that he wrote Love You Forever as a memorial for his two stillborn children, delivered in 1979 and 1980.
It was these gifts that completely transformed him, that made him a father, that broke open his heart to that radical Love You Forever kind of love. These two children who never took a breath in this life have had an incalculably positive impact on the world by inspiring Munsch to write his book and encouraging readers to love one another, despite failures and weaknesses, through every season of life.
No matter what he suffers now, Robert Munsch will never be more vulnerable, more discreet, more unspoken than his stillborn children who inspired his bestselling book of all. In the universality of Robert Munsch’s fears about dementia, we see the need to propose something other than death. It is time for someone else to continue the story with him still in it. Just as in the story, he needs someone to pick him up and rock him “back and forth, back and forth, back and forth.” Singing over him: “I’ll love you forever / I’ll like you for always / As long as I’m living / My [dear one] you’ll be.”
If stillborn children could inspire one of the most-loved children’s books in the twentieth century, then maybe a grandpa with dementia will inspire one of the best stories in the twenty-first.
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