Tag Archives: Bill C-14

Medical Assistance in Dying – Part 3, 4?? Lamb v. Canada (Attorney General), 2017 BCSC 1802

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A recent decision of Chief Justice Hinkson of the British Columbia Supreme Court in Lamb v. Canada (Attorney General), 2017 BCSC 1802 has underscored the fact that Canada is not done with the medical assistance in dying portfolio. As we know, in 2016, the Liberal government pushed through Bill C-14 over the objections of many who asserted that the Bill did not comply with the Supreme Court of Canada’s ruling in Carter v. Canada (Attorney General), 2015 SCC 5. Indeed, in a previous post, I predicted that if the legislation passed “as is”, we would see “yet another challenge (and more people suffering unnecessarily) in the not too distant future”. Unfortunately, this prediction has come to pass.
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The Senate says “’nuff”… Bill C-14 approved by the Red Chamber

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This is just a quick post to note that Bill C-14 in the more restricted format passed by the House of Commons – for the second time – was just approved by the Senate by a 44 to 28 vote. Earlier, the Senate had returned the Bill to the House of Commons with a substantial majority of Senators agreeing that the House of Commons’ version was too restricted, especially considering the requirement that a person seeking medical assistance in dying (“MAID”) be at the point where his or her natural death was “reasonably foreseeable”. Constitutional experts had testified before the Senate to the effect that this version of the Bill was unconstitutional because it stripped away rights from a group of persons that the Supreme Court of Canada had expressly determined were theirs. So what next?

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The deadline has passed. What is the status of physician-assisted death in Canada today?

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The extended deadline set by the Supreme Court of Canada in Carter v. Canada (Attorney General), 2016 SCC 4 expired last night, June 6, 2016, at midnight. The constitutional exemption created by the Court in granting the extension to its original deadline of February 6, 2016, would have logically expired as well. So what is the state of the law today in Canada insofar as it relates to medical assistance in death?

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Alberta Court of Appeal and Ontario Supreme Court – both say Carter does not require terminal illness

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In two separate decisions, the courts have made it clear that nothing in Carter v. Attorney General (Canada), 2015 SCC 5 requires that the person seeking medical assistance in dying be suffering from a terminal illness or condition. And yet the government persists in pursuing Bill C-14 with its requirement of “reasonable foreseeability” of death.

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Medical assistance in dying – the Liberal government responds to the Supreme Court

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More than 14 months after the Supreme Court first held that the Criminal Code provisions forbidding physician-assisted death were unconstitutional in Carter v. Canada (Attorney General), 2015 SCC 5, and almost three months to the day from the date that the Supreme Court gave a four month extension to its suspension of the declaration of unconstitutionality (see Carter v. Canada (Attorney General), 2016 SCC 4), the Liberal government has introduced its legislative response with a bill, Bill C-14, An Act to amend the Criminal Code and to make related amendments to other Acts (medical assistance in dying).

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