In 2010, twenty-one-year-old Andrew Lawton attempted suicide by swallowing a bottle’s worth of pills in a public bathroom. His depression had become unbearable. Thankfully, he failed, and after weeks in a coma, began a long recovery. Earlier this year, he was elected to Canadian Parliament and has become a key advocate of a new law to halt the scheduled expansion of euthanasia to those suffering solely from mental illness.
Bill C-218, the “Right to Recover Act,” was tabled by MP Tamara Jansen and would make it a criminal offense to provide “medical aid in dying” (MAiD) to someone suffering solely from a mental illness. The Supreme Court overturned criminal prohibitions on assisted suicide in 2015, and the next year Parliament passed Bill C-14, which legalized euthanasia for those “enduring intolerable suffering” with a “reasonably foreseeable death.” In 2021, the Trudeau government passed Bill C-7, legalizing MAiD for those struggling with mental illness.
The Trudeau government paused but did not cancel the expansion of the MAiD regime twice after sustained public pushback. “Most Canadians don’t know that under our current laws it is legal, although delayed, to give someone MAiD even if the only thing they’re struggling with is a mental illness,” Jansen told me. “That law is set to take effect in March 2027. Experts have been sounding the alarm for years, saying this law is dangerous.”
Lawton cites his own story as proof. “At my lowest points, I was convinced that there was no way I could live a life I’d be happy with and that I was better off dead than alive,” he told me. “I was wrong. I got better. My fear with the expansion of MAiD is that it normalizes and legitimizes this dangerous idea that death can be the answer to mental health challenges. I would have availed myself of MAiD had it been available to me then. If I had, I probably wouldn’t be here now.”
At a July 9 press conference to launch a public campaign in support of the bill, British Columbian Alicia Duncan joined the MPs to tell her mother’s story. Donna Duncan was in a car accident in 2020 and suffered a concussion; during Covid lockdowns, she had difficulty accessing care and her physical and mental health suffered. Alicia and her sister were told that their mother was scheduled for MAiD only two days before the appointment in October 2021. She had no terminal diagnosis other than depression.
The sisters were horrified, but certain the law would intervene to help them save their mother. The police told them there was nothing they could do, but a provincial judge granted them a warrant for their mother’s arrest under the Mental Health Act. Donna was sectioned in the hospital psychiatric ward she once managed as a nurse. “I can’t explain to you how traumatic it is to be relieved that your mom is in a psychiatric unit,” Duncan said. “We thought at this point she would be safe, that she would be protected.”
But forty-eight hours later, under the Canadian law, she was assessed again. And being a psychiatric nurse, she knew exactly the things to say to pass the assessments. Four hours later, we received a text message that my mom was dead, and her body had been taken to a crematorium. I have since been diagnosed with PTSD. My sister has been diagnosed with PTSD. And under the expansion of our law in 2027, this would qualify us for medical assistance in dying. That irony is also not lost on us.
To date, the Fraser Health Authority has refused to release Donna’s MAiD assessment records. Her daughters are still seeking answers.
If Bill C-218 fails, Alicia Duncan’s story will become common in Canada. Every Canadian knows and loves someone who has struggled with mental illness; most know someone who has experienced suicidal ideation. Many people with mental illness have the will to end their lives, but do not have the means. Once MAiD is offered to those suffering from mental illness, they will have both the will and the means. Many suicide attempts, like Lawton’s, thankfully fail. A lethal injection delivered by a physician will ensure death, with no chance for recovery—and no second chances.
Few Canadians are yet aware of the gut-wrenching scenarios they will face if suicidal loved ones opt for euthanasia and the law prevents them from doing anything to save them. In Calgary, a desperate father appealed to a judge to prevent his twenty-seven-year-old daughter—who suffers from autism, but is physically healthy—from accessing MAiD. The judge ruled that although the father would experience “profound grief,” the daughter’s “right to self-determination” ultimately outweighed the suffering of her father.
In another case in British Columbia, sixty-one-year-old Alan Nichols, who had a history of depression, was euthanized after his family admitted him to the hospital for a psychiatric episode in 2019. His family had taken him to the hospital to be placed on suicide watch. As his sister-in-law Trish Nichols plaintively asked a Senate committee in 2023: “Alan did not have a valid diagnosis for MAiD. Would you feel safe now, bringing your suicidal loved one to seek medical care for recovery when there are no oversight or stringent safeguards surrounding a procedure that kills people?”
A previous bill to criminalize MAiD for mental illness, put forward by former MP Ed Fast, failed in 2023 by a narrow margin of 167 to 150. Jansen’s bill revives that previous effort, and the Right to Recover Act has already attracted the support of many organizations, including Indigenous Disability Canada, Inclusion Canada, and Physicians Together with Vulnerable Canadians. A public campaign encouraging Canadians to tell their own stories of mental illness and recovery has been launched, with Andrew Lawton sharing his own filmed testimony and urging parliamentarians to vote in defense of the vulnerable.
There are few laws that, if passed, would save thousands of lives. Bill C-218 is one such law. As Conservative party leader Pierre Poilievre, who is supporting the legislation, stated: “MP Tamara Jansen’s The Right to Recover Act will save countless lives. . . . Our loved ones suffering with their mental health deserve support, not assisted death from the government. Recovery is possible. We will not give up on them.”
