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FIRST READING: Canada told mentally ill must be euthanized lest they kill themselves

The argument has been at the core of Canadian euthanasia policy since the beginning

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FIRST READING: Canada told mentally ill must be euthanized lest they kill themselves Back to video

A leading MAID advocate argued to parliamentarians last month that Canada must legalize assisted suicide for the mentally ill, lest those same patients commit suicide.

The statement was made at a March 24 parliamentary committee debating the legalization of MAID for Canadians whose “sole underlying medical condition is a mental illness.”

Jocelyn Downie, a leading MAID activist since 2004, warned that if the federal government keeps excluding mentally ill Canadians from accessing assisted suicide, the result will be more mentally ill Canadians dying by suicide.

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“What will happen, if there is an extension or an exclusion, is that people will die by suicide,” she said.

The argument is not a new one. In fact, it’s been at the core of the Canadian assisted suicide regime since the beginning.

Downie was directly involved in litigating Carter v. Canada, the 2015 Supreme Court decision which first struck down Criminal Code sanctions against doctor-assisted suicide.

The decision ruled that Canada’s ban on euthanasia violated the Charter right to “life, liberty and security of the person.”

As to how a right to life could enable a right to death, it was partially because the Supreme Court accepted the argument that “the prohibition on physician-assisted dying had the effect of forcing some individuals to take their own lives prematurely.”

“It is therefore established that the prohibition deprives some individuals of life,” reads the majority opinion.

The argument would be even more prominent in a 2019 decision out of the Quebec Superior Court ruling that it was unconstitutional for Canada to limit euthanasia to those with a terminal illness.

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Canada’s first law legalizing MAID — which came into force in June 2016 — restricted the practice to those whose death was “reasonably foreseeable.”

But the Quebec Superior Court argued that even this limitation violated the right to “life, liberty and security of the person.”

At the core of their decision was Jean Truchon, a Montreal man with a degenerative illness who was pretty open about his intention to take his own life if he couldn’t get approved for MAID.

The decision gets into detail about the various ways Truchon has considered ending his life by suicide, including fasting, drowning himself or throwing his wheelchair in front of a bus.

“Finally, he devised a plan to buy a drug on the street and to take a lethal dose, but he was afraid of having his money stolen by dealers and not getting what he wanted,” reads the decision.

All of this was ultimately evidence to support the court’s final decision, which held that Truchon’s “right to life” was violated by federal sanctions against him seeking a premature death.

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As with Carter, the court accepted the argument that by not offering MAID to Truchon, the government was forcing people like him to “take hasty steps to end their lives prematurely out of fear that they will no longer be physically able to do so once their suffering becomes intolerable.”

Restricting MAID to Canadians with terminal illnesses “thus exposes individuals such as Mr. Truchon … to a heightened risk of death,” it reads, adding, “it therefore infringes their right to life under section 7 of the Charter.”

The federal government, led at the time by prime minister Justin Trudeau, could have appealed the decision. Instead, they accepted its premise and pushed through a package of amendments liberalizing MAID for any Canadian deemed to be enduring “intolerable” suffering.

The suffering no longer needs to be caused by a terminal condition, or even a condition that is untreatable. Rather, the standard is that the condition “cannot be relieved under conditions that they consider acceptable.”

Starting in March 2024, this was supposed to include patients whose sole condition was a mental illness such as depression or anxiety.

Nevertheless, the Liberal government has repeatedly pushed back the eligibility deadline, with the current date standing at March 17, 2027.

In her testimony before the Special Joint Committee on Medical Assistance in Dying, Downie urged Parliamentarians to stick to this deadline, and alleged that prior delays had already caused mentally ill Canadians to take their own lives.

She specifically mentioned the 2024 documentary No Way to Die, which follows two mentally ill Canadians seeking MAID. Both of them would take their own lives when their MAID quest proved unsuccessful.

Downie urged Parliamentarians to watch the film, saying “the extension” had led to the pair’s deaths.

“They had been waiting, and they said we cannot wait anymore,” she said.

Downie has been advocating for broad access to euthanasia since at least 2004, when she penned the book Dying Justice: A Case for Decriminalizing Euthanasia and Assisted Suicide in Canada.

In 2021, she co-authored a paper which argued that suicidal ideation should not disqualify patients from wanting to seek a doctor-assisted death. It argued that suicidality may not even be evidence of mental illness at all.

“Instead of excluding mental illness through a reflexive association between mental illness and suicide, we propose reframing the debate about MAID and mental illness by asking: In which circumstances do we, as a society, wish to prevent death?” it read.

The Liberals have just added a fifth floor-crosser to their caucus, and the fourth Conservative overall. On Tuesday, Marilyn Gladu, the four-time MP for Sarnia-Lambton-Bkejwanong, announced she was now a Liberal.

All of the other four joined the Liberals despite multiple public statements denouncing the Liberal record. Just 23 days before becoming a Liberal, for instance, Michael Ma delivered a speech in the House of Commons denouncing the party as valuing “common criminals” over regular Canadians. “Fairness for the thief, the murderer and the drug dealer, and firmness for the honest citizen and the compliant taxpayer,” he said.

But with Gladu, the phenomenon becomes downright surreal.  

Gladu was one of the most right-wing members of the Conservative caucus, including being an open supporter of Freedom Convoy.

Just two weeks ago, Gladu was admonishing Green Party Elizabeth May for suggesting that the Liberals were not anti-religionists.

“Is (May) aware that there are current Liberal MPs sitting on the benches who think I should be in prison for quoting scriptures as a youth leader,” said Gladu in reference to Bill C-9, the Liberal bill which critics say could criminalize the quotation of “hateful” Bible passages.

Most surreal of all, it’s been just two months since Gladu was publicly denouncing the other Conservative floor-crossers. In January, she sponsored a House of Commons petition demanding that any floor-crossing trigger an immediate byelection.

“Really, the whole point of being an MP is to represent your constituents. So, if they’re voting you in under one platform, for you to switch for whatever reasons, just seems to me to not be representing what you’re supposed to be there to represent,” Gladu told local media at the time.

That same month, when Conservative MP Amarjeet Gill publicly revealed that he had rejected an offer to join the Liberals, Gladu issued a social media post in support that said, “Thank you for being true to the voters who elected you!!”

As to what prompted Gladu to reverse all of this, her official statement doesn’t provide many clues. Like all the other floor-crossers, there’s no specific issue listed. Rather, Gladu says she’s merely fulfilling her constituents’ demands for a “stronger and more independent Canadian economy.”

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