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Montreal, September 9th, 2026 – Canada’s Minister of Justice, Sean Fraser, will soon be responding to a recommendation from a federal committee calling for the indefinite exclusion of medical assistance in dying for mental disorders. With Quebec having legislated in 2023 to exclude mental disorder from its own law, the question arises: where do the parties running in Quebec’s election campaign stand on this possible expansion of the Canadian law?

At an electoral debate on mental health organized by the Coalition communautaire en santé mentale on September 8th, representatives from the three parties present (David Poulin-Latulippe of Québec solidaire, Camille Pellerin-Forget of the Parti Québécois, and Elisabeth Prass of the Quebec Liberal Party) did not take a firm position on the issue. As for the Coalition Avenir Québec, Health Minister Sonia Bélanger sent a letter in April to members of the Special Joint Committee on Medical Assistance in Dying (AMAD) reminding of Quebec’s choice to exclude mental disorder from its law, while adding that “reflection on this question must continue, both within our institutions and among the general public.” The Conservative Party of Quebec has not yet spoken out on the issue.

The Living with Dignity citizen network invites the parties in the race to reaffirm Quebec’s choice, based on the work of the Select Committee on the Evolution of the Act Respecting End-of-Life Care (2021).

As stated in Minister Bélanger’s letter to the AMAD committee, the reasons given for excluding mental disorder from Quebec’s law were numerous:

• psychiatrists and other experts have not reached a consensus that mental disorders are incurable or that the associated declines in capacities are irreversible;
• there did not seem to be a social consensus behind expanding access to medical assistance in dying to individuals whose only medical condition is a mental disorder;
• the difficulty of properly diagnosing mental disorders, and the concerns of many health and social services professionals that the therapeutic relationship with their patients would be made more complex if medical assistance in dying were expanded to mental disorders alone.

Living with Dignity recalled in a statement last March that “ If nothing is done before March 17th, 2027, that date will mark the moment when persons whose mental illness is their sole underlying medical condition will be able to access Medical Assistance in Dying (MAiD) in Canada. These individuals would still have to meet the other legal criteria, but no additional safeguards are currently planned. The Living with Dignity citizen network hopes that federal parliamentarians will join the clear consensus established in Quebec, which maintains the exclusion of mental disorders in its law (Section 26)”.