Why an Indefinite Exclusion Is Now Imperative
Montreal, June 17th, 2026 – On this 10th anniversary of the legalization of medical assistance in dying (MAID) in Canada (Royal Assent of Bill C-14 on June 17th, 2016), the Special Joint Committee on Medical Assistance in Dying (AMAD) is releasing a highly anticipated report, available on this page:
https://www.parl.ca/documentviewer/en/45-1/AMAD/report-1.
Its sole recommendation reads as follows:
That the Government of Canada amend the Criminal Code
to indefinitely exclude persons whose sole underlying medical condition is a mental illness from eligibility
for medical assistance in dying.
The Living with Dignity citizen network welcomes this recommendation, which should come as no surprise to those who have been following the work of the AMAD Committee since its creation in 2021.
The federal committee, reconstituted in 2026 (new parliamentary cycle), is now composed of twelve Members of Parliament and five Senators. In reviewing eligibility and assessing the country’s readiness for access to MAiD when a person’s sole underlying medical condition is a mental illness., it once again encountered a series of today’s recommendation.
Hitting the same wall again
It is important
to connect this with the committee’s previous AMAD report (January 2024). A
majority of its members also recommended postponing the exclusion of MAID for
mental illness, (to read the document: https://www.parl.ca/documentviewer/en/44-1/AMAD/report-3).
The law was then amended by Bill C-62, “An Act to amend An Act to amend the
Criminal Code (medical assistance in dying), No. 2”, to delay the availability
of MAID where mental disorder is the sole underlying medical condition until 17
March 2027.
The reasons
cited today by the AMAD Committee are largely the same as in 2024:
- The
issue of irremediability: “…difficult, if not impossible, to
accurately predict the long-term prognosis of a person with
a mental disorder”. - The
difficulty of distinguishing such MAID requests from suicidality.
- The
lack of professional consensus.
- The
impact on protecting vulnerable persons.
After two
temporary deferrals (2024 and then 2027), it can now be acknowledged that these
reasons for suspending the expansion of MAID access for mental illness are not
about to disappear. In this context, a recommendation for an indefinite exclusion
of this eligibility appears well justified, and the Government of Canada should
act on it.
In recent weeks,
many voices have spoken out against the expansion of MAID to mental illness,
including 16
current or former directors of Canadian university psychiatry departments, 90
organizations in the disability and mental health sector. Since
2023, the Government of Quebec has explicitly excluded mental disorders from
eligibility under the Act Respecting End-of-Life Care.
It should be
noted that this new recommendation from the AMAD Committee partially aligns
with the most recent report on Canada by the United Nations Committee on the
Rights of Persons with Disabilities, which proposed repealing “Track 2 Medical
Assistance in Dying, including the 2027 commencement of Track 2 MAID for
persons whose “sole underlying medical condition is a mental illness”.
– 30 –
JUN
2026