The ministers were there to defend the bill and convince senators to speed its passing by the Supreme Court of Canada’s June 6 deadline.
Advertisement
After a tumultuous trek through the House, the government’s proposed new doctor-assisted dying law has finally arrived in the Senate, where it will become the first major legislative initiative from Team Trudeau to undergo formal review on the floor of the chamber itself. Canadians have said repeatedly they want access to assisted death services.
In February 2015, the high court recognized the right of consenting adults enduring intolerable physical or mental suffering to end their lives with a doctor’s help. Moreover, although draft legislation, in the form of Bill C-14, is now in the legislative process, there is no legislation that is the subject of constitutional review.
Larry Miller says the conscience rights of physicians and other healthcare providers aren’t guaranteed in the unaltered bill C-14 document.
Bill C-14 also does not include some of the most contentious recommendations from the parliamentary committee’s witnesses, including extending the right to die to “mature minors” and the mentally ill.
The Victoria MP stated that the Alberta and Ontario courts recently ruled against the federal government’s approach, which restricts eligibility to euthanasia or assisted suicide to an individual who is suffering from an “incurable” disease, illness or disability, “in an irreversible state of decline” and whose “natural death is reasonably foreseeable”.
The government was ordered by the Supreme Court to bring in a new law on assisted dying by June 6th after it struck down Canada’s ban on the practice past year.
It has proven unpopular with the opposition benches, too, and that dissatisfaction was evident again during Monday’s question period. “And there’ll be uncertainty for medical practitioners and uncertainty for patients in terms of access”, Justice Minister Jody Wilson-Raybould told reporters Tuesday.
Senators are expediting the bill, taking the usual step of inviting Wilson-Raybould and Health Minister Jane Philpott to testify before the entire Senate on Wednesday. (Photo: Sean Kilpatrick/The Canadian Press).
“As legislators, we need to answer the 36 million people that live in this country in terms of putting in place a regime, ” Wilson-Raybould said.
“To suggest that somehow the sky is going to fall on June 6 is specious”, agreed NDP justice critic Murray Rankin, noting that medical regulators in every provinces have issued strict guidelines doctors must follow in providing assistance in dying.
“As minister of justice and the attorney general of Canada I am confident that Bill C-14 is a reasonable and justifiable policy choice. that being said, our government has committed to studying broader forms of eligibility and in particular eligibility for individuals suffering exclusively from mental illness”, she added.
At the party’s convention in Winnipeg this weekend, former prime minister Paul Martin and former interim leader Bob Rae stressed it’s more important to get the law right than to meet the deadline.
Advertisement
The committee meeting was held at the Parliament House under the chairmanship of Muhammad Javed Abbasi, which considered Constitutional (Amendment) Bill 2016, introduced by Zaheeruddin Babar Awan.
