Philippe Couillard, the former Quebec premier who oversaw the province’s first medically assisted dying law, says he is conflicted about how the practice has expanded in Quebec and across Canada. Quebec’s National Assembly passed the 2014 law, which set conditions for terminally ill patients to request medical assistance in dying. The bill was introduced by the Parti Québécois and received multiparty support while Couillard’s Liberals governed.
Couillard said the original law was intended for people with terminal or pre-terminal conditions facing a defined path toward the end of life.
The federal government passed its own legislation in 2016 after a 2015 Supreme Court ruling found that banning medically assisted dying conflicted with the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. A Quebec Superior Court ruling in 2019 struck down the federal requirement that a person’s death be reasonably foreseeable, and Parliament passed revised legislation in 2021. Quebec then allowed advance requests in 2024 from people who want to consent before conditions such as Alzheimer’s disease affect their ability to do so.
The federal government has decided not to expand assisted dying to people whose only condition is mental illness. Justice Minister Sean Fraser also said forthcoming legislation could allow advance consent where provinces permit it, while noting that the federal government controls criminal law rather than provincial service delivery. Couillard called the original law one of the best moments of democracy during his premiership, but said he hopes it was not treated as a trivial matter or advanced too quickly.