MP’s ‘I Got Better’ Campaign Challenges Euthanasia Expansion for Mental Health Sufferers

Conservative MP Andrew Lawton has launched the “I Got Better” campaign to challenge Canada’s planned expansion of its euthanasia regime to include those suffering solely from mental illness, drawing on his own experiences with depression for the campaign.

“This is an issue that’s very near and dear to my heart,” Lawton said in an interview with The Epoch Times. “Because I know that I got better and I went through that path to recovery, and I want to make sure others do too.”

The campaign is meant to bring attention to Bill C-218, The Right to Recover Act, which would amend the Criminal Code to stop the expansion of medical assistance in dying (MAID) legislation for those whose sole condition is mental illness. The legislation was brought forward by Tory MP Tamara Jansen and seconded by Lawton.

Lawton said he experienced “a very serious mental health battle” while he was a teenager and in his early 20s, and almost lost his life to suicide. Lawton said that under the proposed changes to MAID, someone going through similar mental health struggles may be able to get a doctor to end their life and never have the chance to recover.

“My goal with the ‘I Got Better’ campaign is to really put my own story out there and encourage other Canadians to do the same. And I want Canadians to be reaching out to their Members of Parliament,” he said.

MAID became legal in Canada in 2016. At that time, a person needed to have a “grievous and irremediable medical condition” and natural death needed to be “reasonably foreseeable” to qualify for the procedure.

Ottawa expanded eligibility in 2021 when Bill C-7 was passed, which removed the requirement for natural death to be reasonably foreseeable. The bill excluded scenarios where mental illness was the only underlying medical condition, but that exclusion was set to expire on March 17, 2023.

A month before MAID was set to be expanded to include those whose mental illness was their sole medical condition, Ottawa introduced Bill C-39 to extend the date to March 17, 2024. Then, in January 2024, Ottawa announced it would again extend the deadline to allow medical providers and provinces more preparation time. The expansion is currently set to come into force on March 17, 2027.

Canada’s MAID regime stirred controversy when Canadian Armed Forces veterans, including retired CAF corporal and former Paralympian Christine Gauthier, said they were offered MAID unprompted. Gauthier said she was offered the procedure when she called Veterans Affairs Canada to get a new wheelchair platform lift installed at her home. An investigation found four incidents in which MAID was “inappropriately raised,” and that they came from a single employee who was no longer employed with the department, a 2023 Veteran Affairs report said.

The fifth annual report on MAID in Canada found that 15,343 people received the procedure in 2023, which was a 15.8 percent increase from 2022. Ninety-six percent of MAID provisions were for individuals whose natural death was “reasonably foreseeable,” and the median age was 77.7 years.

Lawton said when a previous version of Bill C-218 was going through the House of Commons, it had support from “multiple parties” including the Conservatives, New Democrats, Green Party, and some Liberal MPs. “I would like to see cross-party support for this. This is not a partisan issue, in my view,” he said.

That legislation had completed its first reading in the House of Commons, but died when Parliament was prorogued by then-Prime Minister Justin Trudeau in January 2025.

Lawton is encouraging Canadians who have gone through mental health struggles and “got better” to send their stories to him or post them to social media under the hashtag #IGotBetter.