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?
Tag Archives: Carter v. AGBC
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?
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.
Carter v. AGBC – right to physician-assisted death and rule of law
This October, the British Columbia Court of Appeal released its reasons in Carter v. Attorney General for British Columbia, 2013 BCCA 435. The Court overturned the previous ruling of Madam Justice Lynn Smith who had cleared the way for physician assisted death. This case will undoubtedly be granted leave to appeal by the Supreme Court of Canada (see Case No. 35591). The Court of Appeal was divided: Madam Justices Newbury and Saunders constituted the majority. Chief Justice Finch dissented. Not only does the decision review the law respecting the right to a physician-assisted death but the judges also discussed the age-old principle of stare decisis, an essential element of the Anglo-Canadian constitutional principle of the rule of law. Based on the Court of Appeal’s rationale, Canadians are not entitled to seek the assistance of a physician when at the end of their lives. And the reason for that is that the Supreme Court of Canada ruled that the law imposing that restriction was constitutional twenty years ago in Rodriguez v. British Columbia (Attorney General), [1993] 3 SCR 519.
Constitutionally Canadian 