Ottawa tables MAID bill excluding sole mental illness

The federal government tabled legislation in Parliament on Tuesday that would bar people whose only underlying condition is a mental illness from receiving medical assistance in dying, and would set out when someone can make an advance request for MAID before losing the capacity to consent.

Updated Oct. 27, 2026, at 11 a.m. ET. Details from the government’s afternoon news conference will be added.

Justice Minister Sean Fraser introduced the bill, which would amend the Criminal Code to clarify that a person cannot receive MAID on the basis of a mental illness, CBC News reported. Fraser and Health Minister Marjorie Michel are scheduled to speak to reporters at 1 p.m. ET in Ottawa, CTV News reported, with senior government officials briefing reporters on the bill’s details beforehand.

Fraser said on Oct. 7 that Ottawa had decided not to expand MAID access to people for whom mental illness is the sole basis. He said then there was not a perfect consensus on the issue, but that the government believed this was the correct approach at this time. We reported on that announcement at the time.

The Criminal Code currently schedules an expansion of eligibility to cases where mental illness is the only factor. CTV reported the government decided against going ahead with it after an extensive study by MPs and ahead of a March deadline. The parliamentary panel that studied the question heard from dozens of experts, most of whom opposed expanding eligibility, CTV reported.

The bill also deals with advance requests, which let a person ask for MAID before they lose the capacity to consent because of their health condition. CBC reported the legislation sets specific criteria: the person must be in an advanced state of irreversible decline and must be experiencing enduring and intolerable physical or psychological suffering that cannot be relieved by reasonable means.

Fraser has said what Ottawa proposes on advance requests would have to comply with provincial legislation. CTV reported that several jurisdictions currently hold differing positions on whether adults can consent in advance to MAID after a diagnosis of an incurable illness expected to eventually take away their ability to decide.

Certain Canadians have had access to MAID since 2016, and the eligibility criteria were amended in 2021. Further expansion has been highly controversial, amid reports of existing safeguards failing in complex cases, CTV reported. Our earlier coverage includes a look at the report on mental illness expansion and the data from a decade of legal MAID in Canada.

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