FIRST READING: Canada's very quick slide to approving euthanasia for the mentally ill

[link to nationalpost.com (secure)]

In a lengthy feature for the National Post, Sharon Kirkey detailed how Canada is only one year away from becoming one of the world’s only countries in which it will become legal for patients to seek a medically assisted death on the basis of a psychiatric condition.

Euthanasia was legalized in Canada in much the same way as abortion: The Supreme Court struck down existing bans on the practice and then gave Parliament a time limit to draw up some guidelines. In the case of abortion, a 1988 Mulroney government attempt on an abortion bill was defeated by the Senate, which is why Canada still doesn’t technically have any legal limits on terminating a pregnancy. In the case of euthanasia, in 2016 Parliament passed Bill C-14, a bill that restricted euthanasia to Canadians whose death was “reasonably foreseeable.”