After years of debate and a Supreme Court case, Canada now has a new law on physician-assisted death. Bill C-14 was given Royal Assent on June 17, 11 days after the expiry of the Supreme Court deadline.
The debate over C-14 was closely followed on the Sunshine Coast because Lee Carter and Hollis Johnson of Roberts Creek were among the plaintiffs in the Supreme Court case Carter versus Canada, which stemmed from Lee’s mother Kay’s wish to have an assisted death.
Lee Carter and the BC Civil Liberties Association (also a plaintiff) were not happy with C-14 because of a clause restricting assisted deaths to those near death or where death was “reasonably foreseeable.”
“The Liberal government has crafted Bill C-14 to be so restrictive that my own mother would be turned away,” Carter told a June 6 press conference in Ottawa. “People who suffer from Huntington’s disease, MS, or even spinal stenosis, my mother’s condition, would all be denied because they are not ‘terminal.’”
Carter and the BCCLA had hoped a Senate amendment to remove that clause would pass, but the Liberal majority in the Commons ensured it did not.
West Vancouver-Sunshine Coast-Sea-to-Sky MP Pam Goldsmith-Jones said she thinks the new law does meet the guidelines set out by the Supreme Court in the Carter case.
“I’ve met the Carter family, and I have the highest regard for their leadership on this issue and how personal it is, but the government feels that taken in its entirety the state of Kay Carter’s health would have qualified her. That’s age, frailty and other medical conditions – not simply the nature of illness she was suffering from.”
Some legal analysts and the BC Civil Liberties Association have said they believe the new law will likely be challenged and possibly lead to another Supreme Court case.
“There will be ‘tests’ for sure,” said Goldsmith-Jones, acknowledging that it’s always possible any law could end up before the Supreme Court.
