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Parliament is under no obligation whatsoever to allow assisted suicide in Canada because of the 2015 Supreme Court decision

Parliament's Real Chance to Speak for Life in Euthanasia Quagmire



On May 30, the Canadian Parliament will vote on Bill C-14, tabled to provide a legal framework for euthanasia in Canada. If current trends hold, this means Canada will join a number of other jurisdictions where euthanasia has been legalized for some time, leading to sharply increasing assisted suicide rates for a very broad number of reasons, making this form of death a potential default option in those societies.

The History

Since the 1993 Supreme Court ruling against assisted suicide (Rodriguez vs. British Columbia), a number of attempts were made by MPs to table legislation allowing this practice over the past decades, but all have been defeated. A Senate Report issued in 2010 chronicled events in Canada but did not take any sides or make recommendations. Things changed dramatically when Canada's Supreme Court (Carter vs Canada) decided to declare laws making assisted suicide a crime, irreconcilable with the Charter of Rights. Then, the Province of Quebec legalized euthanasia in the province in December 2015, despite the federal on-going effort to respond to the Carter decision. Finally, due to the Supreme Court's decision, the Conservative federal government created the External Panel on Options for a Legislative Response to Carter v. Canada and commissioned a consultation study to assess legislative options and public opinion, which was submitted on December 15, 2015 after the Liberal government had taken over. Originally, the panel was asked by the (Conservative) Ministers of Justice and Health to present "options for a legislative response to the Carter decision." That request, however, was removed by the Liberal Ministers of Justice (Jody Wilson-Raybould) and Health (Jane Philpott). In other words, our two ministers have decided to make history on their own terms. The panel recognized, "They have reminded us that the words on the pages of the Court's judgment are so much more than a new law" (p.6). McGill ethicist Margaret Somerville agrees: the Carter decision "does not represent an evolution in the foundational values that bind us together as a society, but a revolution, a radical departure from upholding the value of respect for life."

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The Problems

The first, and most fundamental, problem is that the federal panel has been working under a false assumption right from the start. Its report states, "The Carter decision is clear that physician-assisted death must be available for persons who experience enduring and intolerable suffering as a result of a grievous and irremediable medical condition." Not true. The crux of Carter vs. Canada is not that there is a right to physician-assisted death. The Court's judgment was based on its very narrow interpretation of the purpose of the criminal law provisions enacted by Parliament to deter people from assisting others in committing suicide, or encouraging them to do so. All Parliament needs to do, then, is to clarify the purpose of these criminal laws for the Court so the latter can decide any future case brought against the law in the negative. The Court itself stated in its judgment: "If the object of the prohibition is stated broadly as 'the preservation of life', it becomes difficult to say that the means used to further it are overbroad or grossly disproportionate. The outcome is to this extent foreordained." As ARPA Canada has ably explained with the help of two senior lawyers, Parliament is under no obligation whatsoever to allow assisted suicide in Canada because of the 2015 Supreme Court decision. Second, there is a strong contradiction between the government's role in protecting life and the mandate to authorize killing under certain circumstances. Just as it is illegal to inflict bodily harm on someone even with that person's consent, it must be unlawful to kill with the victim's consent. Whereas the government was right to decriminalize suicide (the last thing a suicidal person needs is to be branded a criminal after an unsuccessful attempt to take her own life) in order to prevent the very act of suicide, allowing assisted suicide sends a message to society that some lives are worth less than others. Government is essentially saying, death is preferable to physical dependence, and suffering is not something we need to address but something we need to end by administering death. Rather than standing for life and fighting death as an enemy, society is now told by the legislator that death can be our friend. Third, euthanasia is fundamentally and radically different from suicide, given the former is an inherently social act. As such, it rightly belongs into the realm of criminal law. Nobody should be obliged--or allowed--to kill another human being. Once this is granted, it will be impossible to define (and contain) the cases where it should be allowable and where it should not. Any restriction on assisted suicide will undeniably and logically be fought by those in favour of assisted dying. Once we work under an assumption that there is a right to assisted suicide, it is no longer possible to restrict such a right to certain people. It must, as it now is in several other jurisdictions, be made available to all; every restriction will be brought down as discriminatory. Fourth, there is a clear and obvious clash between the mandate of health care professionals (to preserve life and alleviate suffering) and the idea they should be the ones administering a toxic injection or drink that will cause bodily harm and death. It can only deteriorate the profession and is antithetical to what doctors have been trained and called to do since the beginning of humanity. Would you ever ask a chef to prepare a poisonous meal? Or a loving mother to deny her child food, even if the child demands it? As a society, we need to understand that the scope of our individual self-determination can never be absolute. Individual autonomy is, and must be, balanced with and limited by other principles, such as the sanctity of life. Life must never be taken from the innocent. Fifth, the panel report rightly emphasizes palliative care: "Palliative care employs every available measure and intuition to address the many and variable forms of suffering, without hastening or postponing death. The Panel heard that this approach is consistent with a commitment to non-abandonment and the provision of continuous care" (p.4). Sadly, it does not end there, but adds, "until the time of physician-assisted or natural death." So, palliative care is now only available until such time as your doctor pushes you over the border? Canadians must understand that suffering is ubiquitous in this world. This is easily said when you are not the one who suffers, one might say. But suffering is part of an imperfect world. To end human suffering by prescribing (or allowing) death is to say, this life no longer has any value. It reduces the human being to an animal, euthanized out of mercy. And here is the big lie: Suffering is not useless but is meant to teach us all something about our limitations. That someone needs compassion and care because of an illness does not mean that her life has no meaning--our active engagement with those who suffer is important for our own humanity. Suffering is not something to be done away with by killing each other before suffering becomes unbearable, such as some science fiction movies like 'Soylent Green' or 'Logan's Run'. Society must face suffering and fight it to the best of its ability, not escape from it through an early death. Which takes me to my last point: Assisted suicide will reduce our quest to alleviate suffering. As suicide becomes the default choice to leave this world, we will reject suffering and imperfection as a society. We will no longer learn to appreciate what it is to be human, and instead see those who do not enjoy a quality of life arbitrarily defined, as not worthy to live. Even if there is no Nazi-style forced euthanasia program in Canada, we will experience the ill effects of a society that no longer values human life for what it is. And rather than being motivated by the suffering we see to investigate and invest in remedies that fight debilitating disease and reduce pain with less secondary effects, we are going to take the easier way out by recommending death as an option, even if it is only implied and not enforced.

The Bad News

The panel conducted both an open poll and a targeted poll through a polling company. Although polling results are often somewhat tilted by the way the question is posed, the results seem shattering enough. They illustrate that Canada has become a secular society where a majority no longer values life unless it has a subjectively high "quality". A good majority of Canadians seem to believe that assisted dying should be made available to people with "significant life-threatening illnesses", and are thus deemed to be supportive of the current misguided legislative effort. Of course, such results are at least in part due to a lack of information on the negative consequences of legalizing euthanasia, and should therefore not be taken as the last word. If public opinion could not be influenced, there would be no ads on TV and no election campaigns either. Yet, as a snapshot at this particular time, the situation is dire indeed: over 40% of Canadians polled believe that someone should have access to assisted suicide when they are "concerned about being a burden to others, either financially or emotionally." This is exactly the type of abuse of vulnerable people even the panel was trying to address in its report. On a more positive note, there clearly is concern about the quality and availability of palliative care as an alternative to assisted suicide. The only other highlight in the poll data seems to be that most Canadians are opposed to people receiving assistance to die when they are not suffering from a life-threatening condition. Yet, when it then comes to debilitating diseases such as Alzheimer's, which are not life-threatening, all bets are off and we're back to almost 50% of the population backing assisted suicide for those people (based on a will previously written that would ask for this to occur in case the disease progresses).

What Now?

Parliament may vote at the end of this month, but if Bill C-14 is defeated, it will likely not be for the reasons I laid out above but simply because there are enough MPs that are against the current version of the bill, either because it goes too far or not far enough. Legislation may then be delayed (but assisted suicide will already be a part of Canada in the wake of Carter vs Canada) but it will certainly come back with a vengeance. So let me add three thoughts to conclude this essay:
  1. It is not up to the courts to make law, but to Parliament. As such, Parliament can send a clear message to the Supreme Court as to what the intent of our criminal law is--to protect life in the broadest possible terms. This will, as mentioned above, predetermine the outcome of any future attempts to enact assisted suicide in Canada.
  2. We need a champion MP -- or even better, a bipartisan effort--to table the draft bill provided for the above purpose by ARPA Canada's very intelligent lawyers.
  3. We need to break the silence. I believe churches have missed their chance to speak up against this law. Yes, there may have been some letters by bishops and the likes, but where is the message from the pulpit to the faithful in order to make our voices heard? Where are the phone calls and letters to local MPs telling them to follow the strategy so well laid out by ARPA?
Without very strong grassroots action this year, Canada is on its way to follow the great mistakes that have been made in Belgium and the Netherlands. A video will be released in June, warning Canadians about what they are getting into. But time to enact a reasonable approach is quickly running out. Dear reader, the ball is now in your court.


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Martin Tampier -- Bio and Archives

Martin Tampier is a freelance writer, blogger, and a professional engineer (consultant) by trade. Of German extraction, Martin came to Canada in 1999 and lives with his wife and son in Laval, QC.


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