OTTAWA — Justice Minister Sean Fraser says the Liberal government will vote against a Conservative bill seeking to permanently prohibit medical assistance in dying when mental illness is the sole underlying condition, even as Ottawa prepares legislation with a similar objective.Fraser said the government’s legislation, expected later this fall, will combine an indefinite exclusion for mental illness with provisions removing federal barriers to advance requests for MAID.“The government will be tabling legislation this fall that will maintain that exclusion on an indeterminate basis,” Fraser said Wednesday.He said Canada had made a decision “not to move forward with the expansion” of MAID to people whose sole underlying condition is mental illness.The current exclusion is scheduled to expire on March 17, 2027.Fraser nevertheless said his government would vote against Bill C-218, sponsored by Conservative MP Tamara Jansen, because of its wording..The private member’s bill would amend the Criminal Code to state that “a mental disorder is not a grievous and irremediable medical condition” for the purposes of determining eligibility for MAID.Fraser argued the term “mental disorder” is too broad and could potentially capture neurocognitive conditions, including forms of dementia, for which some patients may already qualify under the existing law.Conservatives said the wording could be amended if the bill passes second reading and is sent to committee.“We put a supplementary report in that was very proactive in saying that we were not going to fight the Liberals over wording,” Jansen said.“If we wanted to be clear that we were just talking about mental illnesses, we would work with them and amend that. And that offer still stands, and the Liberals have been aware of that offer since the report was completed and tabled in Parliament.”Jansen said Conservatives would not “allow wording to be the obstruction in a bill that will save lives.”“That’s what Bill C-218 will do,” she said..Passing the bill at second reading would send it to a House committee, where MPs could amend its language. Defeating it would end its progress through Parliament.Conservative MP Andrew Lawton accused the Liberals of “playing politics with people’s lives” by rejecting C-218 while preparing their own legislation.Lawton also criticized the government’s decision to combine the mental-illness exclusion with the separate issue of advance requests.“They are taking advantage of the fact that there is a baked-in implementation date for the mental health expansion,” he said.Lawton said Parliament would effectively be forced to deal with the government bill in time for it to pass through the legislative process before March 2027.He argued advance requests have not received the same parliamentary scrutiny as the proposed expansion of MAID for mental illness alone.“I think it’s very clear, and as Mr. Cooper said, very cynical on the part of the Liberals, that they’ve done this,” Lawton said, referring to Conservative MP Michael Cooper.Under Ottawa’s planned legislation, the Criminal Code would no longer prevent provinces and territories from establishing systems allowing eligible patients to make advance requests for MAID before losing decision-making capacity.The proposal would be particularly relevant to people diagnosed with conditions such as dementia who fear they will no longer be able to give final consent when their suffering becomes intolerable.Provinces and territories would decide whether and how to establish advance-request regimes, including eligibility rules and safeguards.The government’s decision follows a June parliamentary committee report recommending that MAID remain unavailable indefinitely when mental illness is the sole underlying condition.The Liberal legislation has not yet been introduced, and its precise wording remains unknown.
