The clock is ticking on newly tabled Bill C-41, the MAiD Safeguards Act, with debate taking place in Parliament just days after the legislation to pause euthanasia access for individuals solely experiencing mental illness and decriminalize advance directives was introduced.
Three days after the federal government tabled Bill C-41, it was debated for the first time at second reading Oct. 30. This nods to the reality the bill must navigate committee review, advance through the House of Commons and make its way through the Senate before March 17, 2027, to nullify medical killing from automatically broadening. And there are 10 scheduled weeks of adjournment from Parliament Hill scheduled between Nov. 9 and that date.
While applause greeted the move to stop MAiD for those solely with a mental illness, opposition is already mobilizing, inside and outside the House of Commons, against allowing advance requests for a medically assisted death.
The Euthanasia Prevention Coalition (EPC), led by executive director Alex Schadenberg, is mobilizing supporters in the early aftermath of the bill’s tabling to lobby provinces to “inform the federal government that they will not be expanding the euthanasia law to include euthanasia by advance request,” while inside the halls of power, Conservative MP Costas Menegakis warned that “allowing individual provinces and territories to decide independently on whether to permit advance requests risks creating a deeply confusing, fractured patchwork of systems across Canada.”
Minister of Justice Sean Fraser said he wants this decision to decriminalize advance requests to encourage provinces to “continue this conversation as they determine whether they will create a new framework for the provision of medical assistance in dying, in particular on the issue of advance requests.”
As of now, only the Alberta and Quebec governments have declared a legal stance on allowing advanced requests, no and yes, respectively.
Moira McQueen, the scholar and theologian who led the Canadian Catholic Bioethics Institute for 21 years before retiring in 2025, warned how the bill poses a challenge as the choice to carry out a MAiD procedure is carried out when the patient is no longer capable of choosing.
“[Being capable of making a decision] is so important in law, and rightfully so, but it goes right out the window,” said McQueen. “It’s just suddenly, I think for ideological reasons, no longer to be considered important. I think there will be a fair amount of opposition to that — and I think there should — from medical practitioners. I imagine a lot of lawyers will be looking at that clause and raising that objection.”
The moral quandaries presented by Bill C-41 are also significant, shared McQueen, stressing, “I don’t think anybody should be euthanized”
“The idea that I’m leaving that decision to somebody else to make that decision when I have no mental capacity to make that decision myself, but I may be a perfectly happy, content person. I’m not sure what gives anyone the moral right to determine that a person’s life should be ended at any specific point,” she said.
According to the text of Bill C-41, a person who signed an advance request and later became incapacitated can halt a practitioner from administering a MAiD substance if he or she “demonstrates, by words, sounds or gestures, refusal or resistance to have the substance administered to them.” If the provider doubts the patient was exhibiting refusal or resistance, they are mandated to wait 30 days before making another attempt. Per the bill, involuntary words, sounds and gestures are not considered a demonstration of noncompliance.
Reacting to the other key provision of the act, the halting of MAiD access for individuals exclusively living with a mental illness, McQueen said it “shows what grassroots can do when people really begin to see there is something wrong with [previous MAiD legislation]. There is something that does not help us as human beings and it’s dangerous.”
Psychiatrists, psychologists, physicians, disability rights groups and pro-life Canadians are among the members of the broad coalition that assembled over the past several years.
