However, we can not support the amendment that will substantially change the important balance between individual autonomy and the protection of vulnerable persons, as we carefully designed in the Bill passed by the House of Commons.
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A number of senators who are morally opposed to the notion of assisted dying indicated Wednesday that they’ll never support the bill, no matter how it is, or is not, amended.
The bill, as amended over the past week of lengthy debate in the upper house, passed Wednesday by a vote of 64-12 with one abstention.
– Senators who believe the near-death proviso is unconstitutional and that the Senate has a duty to refuse to pass the bill unless and until that provision is removed.
The Trudeau government has said it won’t accept that key change – meaning the bill faces an uncertain future as it heads back to the House of Commons.
The Liberals have signaled that they plan to send the bill back to the senate as originally written.
The government is hoping senators will back down on their insistence that the near-death proviso must be deleted in order to comply with the charter of rights and with last year’s landmark Supreme Court ruling, which struck down the ban on assisted dying.
If there is a deadlock, the Senate could ask the House of Commons to have the bill parsed by the Supreme Court, something Joyal said he is considering.
Gokool asked Senators to consider the mounting body of evidence showing that the government’s rationale for making Bill C-14 so restrictive will not stand up in court.
The Supreme Court was clear in Carter that “it is the role of Parliament to craft a legislative regime”, and that “such a regime will be given a strong degree of deference by the Court”, she said.
Not surprisingly, however, they are standing firm on the legislation’s central pillar: that only those who are near death should qualify for medical assistance in dying.
But Conservative Genuis pointed out that the justice minister earlier confirmed that “natural death reasonable foreseeable” does “not mean terminal”.
Supporters of the bill, which follows the majority recommendation of a task force that studied the issue, say it could provide an economic boost, allowing high school students to keep summer jobs longer and extending the summer tourism season into the Labor Day weekend.
The Liberal government also rejected Conservative Senator Don Plett’s amendment forbidding a person’s beneficiaries from helping that person “self-administer” a prescribed substance to commit suicide, or to sign a request for assisted suicide or euthanasia on the person’s behalf.
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“We do not exist in a legislative vacuum at this time”, he said.
