Poilievre would not expand Canada's medical assistance in dying law, but will maintain right
OTTAWA — Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre says he would not expand eligibility for medical assistance in dying, but pledged that Canadians would continue to have access to that right, should his party form the next government.
Poilievre made the statement during a campaign stop in his Ottawa-area riding on Saturday.
“People will continue to have the right to make that choice, the choice for themselves. We are not proposing to expand medical assistance in dying beyond the existing parameters,” he told reporters.
“That said, we believe that we also need better healthcare so that people have all sorts of options.”
Medical assistance in dying has been legal in Canada since 2016, following a landmark Supreme Court of Canada 2015 decision that struck down previous Criminal Code provisions that made it a crime for a physician to assist someone in ending their own life, saying it violated the Charter of Rights and Freedoms.
When it became legal, someone’s natural death had to be determined to be “reasonably foreseeable” in order to be eligible.
That rule was challenged in a Quebec court, which found it to be unconstitutional. The Liberal government accepted the court’s finding and introduced an updated law, removing the requirement.
Expanded eligibility for medical assistance in dying took effect in 2021. The updated law was met with swift backlash from some disability advocate groups, warning removing the provision could lead to an increase in deaths from individuals living with disabilities due to a lack of access to other supporters.
It also proposed to open the door to assisted-dying for those seeking it solely on the basis of a mental illness, which had been initially scheduled to take effect in March 2023, but was delayed until March 2024.
Several months before that expansion was set to take effect, the Liberals announced it would establishing another delay, this time pushing it back until March 2027, saying doctors and provinces needed more time to prepare.
That followed vocal criticism from psychiatrists and others about the difficulty of determining whether someone living with severe mental illness could improve and whether an individual’s suffering was related to factors such as poverty and social supports.
The federal Conservatives were the staunchest critics of the proposed expansion, which Poilievre has previously vowed he would not do.
Dying With Dignity Canada, an organization that advocates for end-of-life care and access to assisted-dying, has said there remains strong public support for Ottawa to expand eligibility to allow individuals with neurocognitive diseases like Dementia and Alzheimer’s, to make advanced requests.
More to come.