Conservative members of the Special Joint Committee on Medical Assistance in Dying (AMAD) welcome the committee’s recommendation that the expansion of MAID to cases where a mental illness is the sole underlying medical condition be indefinitely paused, and call on the Liberals to support Bill C-218 and permanently stop the scheduled expansion.

Conservatives have opposed this expansion from the beginning, voting against the Senate amendment to Bill C-7 that set this proposed expansion in motion. 

Since then, the Liberal government has twice been forced to delay their planned expansion through last-minute emergency legislation. Conservatives supported those delays but have consistently maintained that it should be permanently abandoned.

“The Committee has finally aligned itself with Conservative leadership on this issue,” the Conservative members of AMAD said. “The evidence is clear, as it always has been, that moving forward with this expansion is reckless and dangerous.”

Conservative MP Tamara Jansen has already introduced a Private Member’s Bill, C-218, which would amend the Criminal Code to permanently repeal the scheduled expansion of the MAID program where mental illness is the sole underlying medical condition. Conservatives are calling on the Liberals to support the bill, and are prepared to work collaboratively with the government to that end. 

Additionally,  in their supplementary opinion to the committee’s recommendation, Conservatives suggested stronger federal monitoring and public reporting, minimum national standards for MAID oversight, updated guidance and training, and a review of the effectiveness and enforceability of current MAID safeguards.

“Vulnerable Canadians deserve care, protection and hope. They should not be offered MAID as a substitute for the support their governments have failed to provide,” the Conservative AMAD members concluded. “The Liberal government must put politics aside, support Bill C-218, and follow the committee’s recommendation to permanently stop this dangerous expansion.”