On November 10, 2022, leadership of the Society of Canadian Psychiatry issued a Call to Action to national policy makers and organizations to call for a delay to the planned expansion of MAiD for mental illness, at the time scheduled for March 2023. Over the next several weeks groups and individuals across the country joined this call for delay.

On December 15, 2022, the federal government responded to these growing calls and announced it would delay the planned March 2023 implementation of MAiD for mental illness. However in January 2023, the government re-committed to implementing MAiD for mental illness in 2024 without requiring further review of evidence to assess if such implementation could be responsibly and safely done.

While the first part of the call by SoCΨ, and others, for a pause has been impactful, the relevance and importance of the second part of the 2022 SoCΨ Call to Action, demanding that this delay be used to ensure evidence inform future policies in an unbiased way, was highlighted even more through recent debates and the February 2023 Special Joint Committee report. Please read the response (top right corner of this page) of over 40 witnesses to the parliamentary committee’s report regarding concerns about bias in the process to date.

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2022 CALL to ACTION: SoCΨ calls on mental health and policy leaders across Canada to join its Call to Action that:

1.  Any potential implementation or expansion of MAiD for sole mental illness be delayed until 2024.

2. The purpose of delaying such potential implementation be to allow for proper consultation and review of the safety and risks of MAiD for sole mental illness, and development of evidence-based recommendations regarding MAiD for sole mental illness. Such consultation should be mindful of addressing process flaws identified in consultations to date.