Tamara Jansen, Special to The Interim:
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 …
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 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 …
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 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 …
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.
Tamara Jansen is the Conservative MP for Cloverdale-Langley City and sponsor of C-218 (An Act to amend the Criminal Code (Medical Assistance in Dying). These are excerpts from her Dec. 5 speech in the House of Commons during Second Reading of the bill.
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