The Conversation Weekly: Assisted dying -- Canada grapples with plans to extend euthanasia to people suffering solely from mental illness

We’re bringing you an extra episode this week. This episode comes from The Conversation Weekly,  our sister podcast from The Conversation UK. The episode, which we're running in full, centres around medically assisted dying. 

In Canada, medical assistance in dying (Maid) became legal in 2016. 

And the government intends to extend eligibility to people whose sole reason for ending their life is mental illness. But that planned expansion, now twice delayed, is deeply controversial. 

In this episode of The Conversation Weekly podcast, Gemma Ware speaks with Karandeep Sonu Gaind a leading psychiatrist from the University of Toronto about why he's a vocal opponent of the law’s expansion. Canada's expansion of its medically assisted dying law to people whose reason for wanting to end their life is mental illness. 

Gemma starts the episode with The Conversation Canada’s Health and Medical editor, Patricia Nicholson, who explains how assisted dying works in Canada. 

In this conversation, Professor Gaind explains the intersectional factors around this issue, including race, class and gender.

If you’re interested in hearing more conversations like this one, subscribe to The Conversation Weekly wherever you get podcasts.