Send an urgent message to Canadian legislators urging them to stop expanding assisted suicide
OTTAWA, Ontario (LifeSiteNews) — After much pushback from pro-life, medical, and mental health groups as well as most of Canada’s provinces, the federal government under Prime Minister Justin Trudeau delayed its planned expansion of euthanasia to those suffering solely from mental illness to 2027, Health Minister Mark Holland and Justice Minister Arif Virani announced yesterday.
“We agree with the conclusion that the committee has come to that the system is, at this time, not ready and more time is required,” Holland told reporters.
Holland and the Liberal Party are still fully on board with expanding Medical Assistance in Dying (MAiD) despite the delay. He told reporters that the government has “a moral imperative” to extend the practice to those with mental illness.
The delay was welcomed by the Euthanasia Prevention Coalition, but executive director Alex Schadenberg told LifeSiteNews that euthanasia “should be scrapped altogether.”
“We will be active in the next election reminding voters of the Members of Parliament who voted against Bill C-314 last fall, a bill that would have scrapped euthanasia for mental illness,” Schadenberg said.
A March 17 deadline is set to introduce legislation to officially pause MAiD expansion. Holland said the Liberals will meet that deadline.
Campaign Life Coalition (CLC) said that Canadians need “compassionate care, not killing,” and has urged Trudeau’s federal government to permanently scrap, not just delay, its planned expansion of euthanasia to those suffering from mental illness.
The Conservative Party of Canada (CPC) under leader Pierre Poilievre is supportive of the pause but wants the expansion of MAiD to be dropped altogether.
The CPC has opposed the expansion of MAiD, but recent attempts to stop the grim procedure, such as through Bill C-314, have failed.
With polls showing that the CPC is poised to win the next federal election, which will occur no later than fall 2025, the possibility that the euthanasia expansion will proceed as planned in 2027 seems unlikely.
Canada’s MAiD laws were set to expand on March 17 because of the 2021 passage of Bill C-7, which also allowed the chronically ill – not just the terminally ill – to qualify for so-called doctor-assisted death.
The delay also comes after a joint parliamentary committee report recommended that the expansion of MAiD be postponed.
Many provincial governments have blasted the planned expansion of MAiD, with some saying it is not needed and others saying their healthcare systems are not ready to implement the new rules.
Yesterday, health ministers from most Canadian provinces and territories sent a joint letter to Holland and Viran urging the government to put an indefinite delay on the expansion of MAiD. It is not yet clear how Holland and Viran will respond to the letter.
The current delay is the second time the expansion has been put on hold.
Originally set to go into effect in March 2023, pressure from the same groups led the Liberals under Trudeau to delay Bill C-39.
The original delay in expanding MAiD until 2024 also came after numerous public scandals, including the surfacing of reports that Canadian veterans were being offered the fatal procedure by workers at Veterans Affairs Canada (VAC).
The number of Canadians killed by lethal injection since 2016 stands at over 44,958, and many fear that because the official statistics are manipulated, that number may be even higher.
Indeed, a recent Statistics Canada update admitted to excluding euthanasia from its deaths totals despite it being the sixth highest cause of mortality in the nation.
Send an urgent message to Canadian legislators urging them to stop expanding assisted suicide