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.
