The Senate Standing Committee on Law and Justice Tuesday unanimously approved the Constitutional Amendment Bill 2016, seeking elimination of Article-182 from the Constitution that allows appointment of ad hoc judges in the Supreme Court (SC).
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Senators must still debate the bill at a second reading, send the bill to Committee, consider possible amendments, then debate and vote on the bill a final time.
Failure to enact a law by June 6 would see the Supreme Court ruling that overturned the ban on assisted suicide come into force without any federal legislation to regulate the practice.
They must also be a consenting adult, at least 18 years old, with a serious and incurable disease, illness or disability, and be in “an advanced state of irreversible decline”. “You’re forcing those individuals to perhaps stop feeding themselves, to mutilate themselves or harm themselves to make themselves eligible for medical assistance in dying”, he said. There are also independent members in the chamber as well.
There will be no legal void if new assisted dying legislation isn’t passed by June 6, she stressed.
“It’s an historic day”, Health Minister Jane Philpott said immediately following the vote, thanking MPs for passing a bill she said “will essentially transform end-of-life care options for Canadians”.
The top court suspended its decision for a year to allow for Parliament and provincial legislatures to respond, if they chose, with a bill consistent with the constitutional parameters it set out.
The House of Commons voted on report stage of Bill C-14 Monday night and passed it without amendment.
Wilson-Raybould said Parliament doesn’t have to “cut and paste” from the Supreme Court ruling in order to draft its legislation.
He said the “sky has not fallen” since.
Philpott replied, though, that a lack of a federal framework on abortion has led to a patchwork of access issues across the country, pointing to P.E.I. which only recently announced residents would get access to the service.
Under the new law doctors and nurse practitioners would be permitted to actively cause, or assist in, the death of a consenting, qualified patient without risk of criminal charges.
Senator Cowan asked Philpott about advance directives; Philpott said the issue was one of topics the government heard about the most from Canadians, but it would have been far too complex to sort out while trying to get legislation in place quickly.
“There is something so fundamentally wrong and discriminatory in the application of this”, said Lankin, a former Ontario health minister.
“Human life is not like animals…that they can just shoot down and say ‘you’re in pain, let’s kill you.’ Bang!”
Those were “missed opportunities” to improve what Falk described as a “significant social reengineering bill…because it changes how we view the sanctity of life”.
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Jim Cowan, the leader of the Senate Liberals, said he predicts people are prepared to sue the government nearly immediately if Bill C-14 does pass – “and I have no doubt that those applications would succeed”.
