Frank Bergman – SLAY News.com Oct 26, 2026
Canada’s top newspaper is demanding that the government begin euthanizing healthy members of the public suffering solely from “mental disorders.”
The demand for mentally ill citizens to be euthanized was made in an article published in Canada’s Globe and Mail.
The outlet is calling on the globalist government to expand the nation’s “assisted suicide” laws to allow for lethal injections to be administered to people suffering solely from mental illness.
In the article, written by euthanasia practitioner Dr. Jean Marmoreo, the Mail argues that any opposition to the plan from government is “politically driven cowardice.”
Marmoreo’s column follows Justice Minister Sean Fraser’s announcement that Prime Minister Mark Carney’s government plans to prohibit euthanasia when mental illness is a person’s sole underlying condition.
Euthanasia advocates are arguing that mentally ill patients should be killed by the government under the nation’s taxpayer-funded Medical Assistance in Dying (MAID) program.
Published under the headline “Refusing MAID for mental disorders will come at a terrible cost,” the opinion piece argues that Canada should extend its Medical Assistance in Dying program to psychiatric patients.
The push comes as Canadians struggle to obtain mental health treatment and psychiatrists warn that the country’s existing euthanasia system is already approving people who should not qualify
Euthanasia Practitioner Demands Expansion
Marmoreo, co-author of The Last Doctor: Lessons in Living from the Front Lines of Medical Assistance in Dying, opened her argument by emphasizing her experience with death.
“I have sat at more deathbeds than most politicians will ever picture in their lifetimes,” Marmoreo wrote.
She argued that “Canadians can’t afford to have our legislators choose this path when it comes to people with mental illness.”
Her position would extend euthanasia eligibility beyond physical conditions to people whose sole qualifying illness is psychiatric.
That proposal raises a fundamental question: why expand access to death while access to treatment remains so difficult?
Approximately one in five Canadians experiences a mental health problem or illness, with roughly half affected by age 40.
The Canadian Mental Health Association estimates a mental health funding gap exceeding a billion dollars.
Psychiatrists Warn Canada Has Already Gone Too Far
Two University of Toronto psychiatrists, including one who has performed euthanasia, recently warned in The New York Times that Canada’s system has gone too far and is approving patients who should not receive assisted death.
Marmoreo nevertheless argued that denying psychiatric patients access to euthanasia discounts their suffering.
“Ottawa is also telling a patient with treatment-resistant depression or complex PTSD that their agony is less credible than another person’s cancer,” Marmoreo wrote.
“All this simply because their illness resides in the brain.
“Anyone who believes that the pain of mental illness is less terrible than the pain of cancer hasn’t experienced the helplessness of sitting with a family in the face of their child or loved one’s severe depression.”
But recognizing severe psychiatric suffering does not require accepting that recovery is impossible.
Psychiatrist Dr. John Maher, who specializes in patients considered exceptionally difficult to treat, argues that mental illness is not irremediable and that further options remain.
Marmoreo herself acknowledged uncertainty about predicting whether a psychiatric condition can improve.
“Psychiatry is understandably uncomfortable with the idea of predicting irremediability,” she wrote.
“And perhaps a cure for treatment-resistant depression will arrive tomorrow.
“As doctors, we always practice with hope, and these complex cases test us.”
Recovery Versus an Irreversible Decision
That uncertainty sits at the center of the controversy.
A patient who survives a suicidal crisis retains the possibility of recovery.
Euthanasia permanently ends that possibility.
Marmoreo invoked “bodily autonomy” in defending expansion and pointed to “patients who deteriorated and ended their lives alone” when discussing the consequences of refusing access.
Her argument treats the possibility of suicide outside the medical system as a reason to permit assisted death within it.
Yet Canada’s suicide figures underscore how many people survive attempts.
In 2024, there were an estimated 100,000 suicide attempts and 4,394 suicide deaths, excluding euthanasia.
Those figures do not predict how many people would seek or receive euthanasia.
They do illustrate the enormous stakes of decisions affecting people experiencing suicidal crises.
The government’s proposed prohibition would keep mental illness alone from qualifying someone for euthanasia.
Marmoreo wants that barrier removed, even as treatment remains difficult to access and psychiatric recovery cannot be ruled out with certainty.