Key dates in the evolution of Canada's medically assisted dying laws

Medical aid in dying (MAID) was legalized in the province a decade ago, and Quebec has the highest rates of it anywhere in the world.

The Department of Justice is introducing a bill that proposes two major changes to Canada’s laws governing medical assistance in dying. One would allow adults to consent in advance to receive MAID, if they are diagnosed with an incurable illness that is likely to take away their ability to make the decision later on.

The proposed legislation, tabled Tuesday, also states Canada will not move ahead with expanding MAID to people on the basis of a mental illness.

Here are some key dates in the evolution of MAID legislation in Canada:

1892: Canada’s first Criminal Code included a provision that barred people from aiding and abetting suicide and carried a sentence of life in prison. It also criminalized suicide.

1972: The federal government under Prime Minister Pierre Elliott Trudeau repealed the Criminal Code section that criminalized suicide. The government left in place the provision that made it a criminal offence to aid or abet a person ending their life, and another provision that said no person could consent to their life being ended.

1991-2010: The House of Commons debated six private member’s bills seeking to decriminalize assisted suicide. None passed.

1993: Sue Rodriguez, a woman diagnosed with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis or ALS, challenged the Criminal Code provision banning assisted suicide in the country’s highest court. The Supreme Court of Canada ruled against her in a 5-4 decision. Rodriguez died with the help of an anonymous physician in 1994.

1995: A Senate committee released a special report on euthanasia and assisted suicide.

While members of the committee held different views on how to deal with the suffering of people who are dying, their report said all had “deep concerns about the implications of permitting assisted suicide.”

Those who supported it suggested minimum safeguards. They said that a person receiving assisted death must be competent, must be suffering from an irreversible illness that has reached an intolerable stage, and must have made a free and informed request without coercion.

2009: The Collège des médecins du Québec released a discussion paper that concluded euthanasia could be a final step in end-of-life care under exceptional circumstances, like uncontrollable pain or interminable suffering.

2010: By this time, some form of assisted dying was legal in the Netherlands, Belgium, Luxembourg, Switzerland, Colombia and the U.S. states of Oregon, Washington and Montana.

2011: The British Columbia Civil Liberties Association filed a lawsuit challenging the two sections of the Criminal Code outlawing assisted death, arguing they violated the Section 7 guarantee in the Charter of Rights and Freedoms of “life, liberty and security of the person.”

This case, brought on behalf of Lee Carter, Hollis Johnson, William Shoichet and Gloria Taylor, became known as Carter v. Canada.

2012: The Supreme Court of British Columbia ruled in favour of the British Columbia Civil Liberties Association in the Carter case. The federal government under Prime Minister Stephen Harper appealed.

2012: A committee of Quebec’s National Assembly released a report on “dying with dignity” after two years of work that included expert opinions, public consultation and travel to France, Belgium and the Netherlands.

The report concluded that medical aid in dying, or MAID, should be an additional option for end-of-life care in Quebec for a consenting adult patient suffering from a serious, incurable disease who is in an advanced state of decline.

2013: The Carter case went to the Court of Appeal for British Columbia.

The Appeal Court overturned the lower court’s ruling, finding the judge should have upheld the Supreme Court of Canada’s decision in Rodriguez. The B.C. Civil Liberties Association sought leave to appeal at the Supreme Court of Canada.

2014: Quebec’s National Assembly passed a law to allow medical aid in dying for adults in the province who are at the end of their lives, suffering from a serious and incurable illness and in an advanced state of irreversible decline. The law would take effect the following year.

2015: In a unanimous decision, the country’s top court struck down two sections of the Criminal Code — the prohibition on aiding and abetting suicide and the section stating that no one can consent to have death inflicted on them.

The written decision stated it was “cruel” to deprive people of the ability to seek help from a physician to end their lives.

The Court ruled the laws violated the Section 7 Charter rights of “competent adults who seek such assistance as a result of a grievous and irremediable medical condition that causes enduring and intolerable suffering.”

The Supreme Court invalidated the sections of the Criminal Code and gave Parliament one year to create a legal framework for assisted dying. The one-year grace period ended in February 2016.

2015: The Canadian Medical Association began developing training on medical assistance in dying for physicians.

In October, the Liberals won the federal election. Justin Trudeau’s government asked the Supreme Court for a six-month extension to the deadline. The court granted four extra months, ending in June 2016.

2016: The House of Commons passed Bill C-14 in June, making it legal for doctors to help a person end their life if they had a terminal illness. The Senate tried to expand the right to die beyond those whose deaths were deemed “reasonably foreseeable,” but members of Parliament voted against those amendments.

2019: The Superior Court of Quebec ruled that limiting MAID to people whose natural deaths were reasonably foreseeable was unconstitutional in a case involving two plaintiffs — Jean Truchon and Nicole Gladu — who were living with incurable and degenerative conditions.

The federal Liberal government and the Quebec government both chose not to appeal the decision.

2021: Parliament passed a law removing the requirement that a person’s death had to be reasonably foreseeable, creating “track 1” and “track 2” MAID.

People whose deaths were not reasonably foreseeable — those in track 2 — had to meet additional eligibility criteria that included a 90-day assessment period and involvement of a practitioner with expertise in the condition causing the applicant’s suffering.

In response to the Truchon case, the law allowed patients in some circumstances to waive final consent under an advance consent arrangement.

The law also excluded people whose sole underlying condition was a mental illness because of the complexity of those cases. The bill ordered an independent expert review to be done within a year. The exclusion covering cases of mental illness was set to last two years, until March 2023.

2022: The expert panel on MAID and mental illness made recommendations to Parliament that included developing MAID practice standards, requiring independent assessments and creating a model of prospective oversight.

2023: The Liberal government extended the exclusion for people with mental illness by one year to “provide additional time to prepare for the safe and consistent assessment and provision of MAID” and allow the government to consider a report from a special committee of MPs and senators studying MAID.

Quebec’s National Assembly passed amendments to its own assisted dying laws to allow people to draft an advance request, which would come into force in the event that they lose capacity to request MAID.

2024: The government once again delayed eligibility for people whose sole underlying condition is a mental illness until March 2027.

2026: On June 17, a parliamentary committee recommended the federal government indefinitely exclude people with mental illness from becoming eligible for MAID. Some dissenting senators on the committee criticized the process as “fundamentally flawed” and called for the government to refer the question to the Supreme Court of Canada.

Oct. 7, 2026: Justice Minister Sean Fraser announces that despite those criticisms, the government will move forward with the committee’s recommendation to exclude people whose sole underlying condition is mental illness from receiving MAID indefinitely and will table legislation to that effect.

Oct. 27, 2026: Fraser tables Bill C-41 to amend the Criminal Code to allow advance requests for people who are suffering from an incurable illness that will take away their capacity to give consent later. The legislation also stops a scheduled expansion of MAID to people who suffer solely from a mental illness.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Oct. 27, 2026.

Sarah Ritchie, The Canadian Press