The Liberals’ inferior solution to MAiD reform

Canadians have good reason to be wary of the Liberals’ approach to medical assistance in dying (MAiD). On Oct. 7, the government announced it would make unavailable to people whose sole underlying condition is a mental illness. But hours later, it voted down a private members’ bill that would have done just that.

It is a cruel and lethal joke to say that someone who is mentally ill would ever have the capacity to make a sound decision about ending their life. Thankfully, Conservative MP Tamara Jansen introduced Bill C-218, the Right to Recover Act, to try to prevent that from happening. Her bill would have amended the Criminal Code to prevent a mental disorder alone from qualifying someone for MAiD.

Unfortunately, the bill was defeated at second reading by 187 votes to 141. Most Liberals and the Bloc Québécois voted against it, while the Conservatives, New Democrats and Green MP Elizabeth May supported it. Two Liberal MPs, Marilyn Gladu and Kent MacDonald, broke with their party.

Fear not, the Liberals insist. Hours before the vote, Justice Minister Sean Fraser announced that the government would introduce its own legislation to exclude from MAiD those who were sick in the head, but nowhere else. However, this Liberal bill will also facilitate advance requests for MAiD by people who risk losing decision-making capacity because of a serious illness.

The government complained that Bill C-218 used the term “mental disorder,” which could potentially sweep in neurological conditions such as Alzheimer’s disease. Fraser also argued that the Conservative bill did not address the government’s separate objective of allowing advance requests for MAiD.

That explanation is inadequate, however. Rather than allow a bill to proceed to committee, where its wording could be examined and corrected, the Liberals defeated it outright.

What happened here is par for the Mark Carney course. Whenever the Conservatives sink their teeth into a legitimate issue that could undermine support for the Liberals, the Liberals defang their Opposition by adjusting their policies.   

The public should never forget that MAiD for the mentally ill was the Liberals’ idea. They later legislated delays for the implementation, but it took a Conservative MP’s bill to persuade them to stop such intentions indefinitely. The Liberal response smacks more of a political calculation than a change of heart.

As Mir North argued in the Oct. 9 Substack article Credit, With a Catch: Liberals Halt MAID, Kill C-218, the government has claimed the policy victory while retaining control over the legislation and its timetable. Canadians are expected to trust new legislation will arrive in time, contain the necessary protections, and pass before the exclusion on MAiD for the mentally ill expires on March 17, 2027.

The Carney government has turned this political vulnerability into a political advantage. They take away from the Conservatives credit for a sensible legislative change and even set up their opposition for blame. Upcoming Liberal legislation will include advance directives for people to authorize their MAiD for a time when they lack capacity, but block MAiD for mental illness. Conservatives will be forced to vote in favor of the former to ensure the latter.

The Liberals have now also ensured that scrutiny of the parameters and impacts of advance directives in the new legislation won’t drag on too long. Doing so would put any suicidal-ideated mentally ill people at risk of state-assisted death. The clock is ticking, so they will rush through advancement of one new avenue for MAiD in the name of stopping another. Arguably, that’s diabolical.

In a less likely scenario, resignations by Liberal MPs could jeopardize the party’s narrow majority in the House of Commons. If Conservatives forced an election before the new MAiD legislation passed, they could be blamed for a raft of state-assisted suicides of mentally ill people. That possibility could buy time for this government.

The implementation of MAiD already has plenty of horror stories, but the advance directive will add new ones. It is completely foreseeable that someone will sign an advance directive authorizing MAiD, but later on they change their mind. Yet, someone in the medical system determines the decline in their faculties is sufficient to make the former advance directive to carry weight.

At that point, the patient, who still has enough brains to know when it comes down to it, they really don’t want to die, is laid down for lethal injection, and both they and their family are helpless to intervene.

It is incredible how the Liberals have manoeuvered one political challenge after another to perpetuate their own power. They are the cat with nine lives. And they just traded the lives of some Canadians for others so their government could live another day.