February | 2018 | Constitutionally Canadian

Last year, the federal government announced that it was approving the twinning of the TransMountain pipeline which, once constructed and initialized, would increase multifold the volume of Alberta’s oil sand bitumen that could be shipped out of Vancouver’s Burrard Inlet. The new NDP government in British Columbia announced on January 30, 2018 that it was considering regulations to limit any increase in diluted bitumen that could be shipped through British Columbia. This announcement was met almost immediately by a warning from a stern Alberta Premier Rachel Notley that BC was acting unconstitutionally and that it was purporting to exercise powers it did not have. The constitutional battle lines are being quickly drawn. (See the news report from CBC News from that date for a quick review of what was said by the various parties).

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Another chapter in the continuing saga of medical assistance in dying (“MAID”) was completed on January 31, 2018 when the Divisional Court of the Ontario Superior Court of Justice ruled on the constitutionality of the “Effective Referral Provisions” of the Human Rights Policy and MAID Policy of the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Ontario (“CPSO”). (In this blog post, I am focussed on the MAID Policy but the judgment refers to the Policies.) The Effective Referral Provisions require physicians who are unwilling to provide, amongst other matters, MAID to their patients, on moral or religious grounds to provide an effective referral to another health care provider. The Christian Medical and Dental Society of Canada and the Canadian Federation of Catholic Physicians’ Societies, and Canadian Physicians for Life, along with a number of individual “objecting” physicians had challenged the Effective Referral Policy on the basis that the Policy violated their freedom of religion and conscience protected by s. 2(a) of the Charter and their right to equality protected by s. 15. Justice Wilton-Siegel, (Justices Lococo and Matheson concurring) disagreed and dismissed the challenges: The Christian Medical and Dental Society of Canada v. College of Physicians and Surgeons of Ontario, 2018 ONSC 579.

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Constitutionally Canadian

Monthly Archives: February 2018

BC’s threat to limit increased flow of bitumen and Alberta’s threat to see BC in court: a constitutional showdown

In Ontario, patients’ rights trump physicians’ rights when dealing with medical assistance in dying