Canada Minute: Issue 77

Canada Minute - Your weekly one-minute summary of Canadian politics.

📅 This Week In Canada: 📅

• A special parliamentary committee is recommending that the federal government permanently bar people whose only underlying condition is mental illness from accessing medical assistance in dying. In a report tabled in the House of Commons on Wednesday, the Special Joint Committee on Medical Assistance in Dying urged the government to amend the Criminal Code to add the exclusion, arriving on the tenth anniversary of MAID's legalization in Canada. Without action from Parliament, MAID eligibility is currently set to expand to those whose sole condition is a mental disorder on March 17th, 2027. The committee pointed to a continued divergence of views and to testimony that doctors cannot reliably predict whether someone will recover or distinguish a MAID request from suicidality. Conservative MP Tamara Jansen said the recommendation would "save thousands of lives", and the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health also backed it. Some advocates who have sought MAID for mental illness condemned the move, saying it denies them equal rights and bodily autonomy.
  
  
• Also before Parliament, the federal government has tabled new legislation aimed at ensuring clean drinking water in First Nations communities, backed by $4.6 billion over five years. Indigenous Services Minister Mandy Gull-Masty introduced Bill C-37 in the House of Commons on Tuesday, describing the funding as the single largest commitment ever made to First Nations water protection and the first such attempt by Prime Minister Mark Carney's government. The bill has drawn criticism for softening the language of an earlier version: where the previous Trudeau-era bill affirmed a "human right" to clean water, the new bill commits only to "progressive realization". A lawyer whose work led to the underlying settlement on behalf of some 260 First Nations called the change "legal gymnastics", arguing it turns a clear right into an aspirational policy with little accountability. Some First Nations leaders said they were not consulted, and the NDP's Indigenous affairs critic called the bill weaker than past Liberal attempts.
  
  
• Elsewhere on the Hill, Conservative MP Corey Tochor has introduced a private member's bill that would legalize the medical use of certain psychedelics, allowing physicians to prescribe psilocybin and psilocin without first obtaining approval from federal regulators. Psilocybin is currently a controlled substance, and patients can only access it through Health Canada's Special Access Program, which advocates describe as slow and heavily bureaucratic. The department says it has issued just 354 authorizations since January 2022, and the Conservatives say approval rates have recently fallen to about 30%. The bill would also direct Health Canada to grant psilocybin priority review status to encourage further study. The Saskatoon MP said he was moved to act by a constituent who lost legal access to psilocybin he used to manage severe anxiety during cancer treatment and travelled abroad to obtain it before his death in 2024. Tochor framed the bill as a matter of "freedom of choice", but as a private member's bill without government backing, it faces long odds of passing.
  
  
• On the economy, Canada's population shrank in the first quarter of 2026, falling 0.1% as both immigration and births declined, according to Statistics Canada. The number of new permanent immigrants dropped about 20% from a year earlier, to 83,149 from 104,210, while the count of non-permanent residents fell by more than 117,000. For the first time in recent memory, deaths also outnumbered births, with 155 more people dying than were born nationally over the quarter. Economists tied the shift to the federal government's reversal on immigration targets, which National Bank economist Stéfane Marion had earlier called "unsustainable", and noted that GDP per person has improved as the population has fallen. University of Waterloo economist Mikal Skuterud said per-capita GDP growth has gone from negative to flat or slightly positive. Alberta was the only large province still showing population growth, while Ontario and British Columbia saw the steepest declines in temporary residents.
  
  
• Finally, a Senate committee is calling on CBC/Radio-Canada to do more local journalism, recommending that its mandate be amended to require local news coverage. The transport and communications committee's report, released Wednesday, makes seven recommendations after hearing from 60 witnesses since 2024, many of whom described an industry in crisis. The committee noted that 521 local outlets have closed in 347 communities across Canada since 2008, leaving what its chair, Conservative Senator David Wells, called growing "news deserts". Alongside the mandate change, the report urges the broadcasting regulator to impose local reporting requirements and calls for stable multi-year funding and periodic outside review of the broadcaster's fairness and balance. The recommendations land amid a Conservative push to defund the CBC entirely. Wells said the broadcaster remains a required service in rural and remote areas but argued it needs a "course correction" in how it serves the public.
  
  

🚨 This Week’s Action Item: 🚨