Category: Canada

Canadian MP introduces protection of conscience bill

Bill C-268 (2016)  Protection of Freedom of Conscience Act

Sean Murphy*

Conservative Member of Parliament Kelly Block has introduced a bill that would make it a crime to coerce medical or nurse practitioners or other health professionals to take part, directly or indirectly, in “medical assistance in dying.” The preamble of the bill makes clear that it is intended as a protection of conscience measure.

The text of the bill is much the same as a bill proposed by MP Mark Warawa in 2016.

“Medical assistance in dying” means euthanasia and assisted suicide provided by physicians or nurse practitioners. Since it is considered medical treatment in Canada, it falls within provincial jurisdiction over health care. Similarly, provinces have primary jurisdiction over human rights like freedom of conscience. Thus, the federal government has been easily able to refuse amendments like this on the grounds that they unconstitutionally trespass on provincial jursidiction.

The federal government has constitutional jursidiction in criminal law and could make it a crime to compel someone to be a party to homicide and suicide. Since “medical assistance in dying” is non-culpable homicide and non-cuplpable assisted suicide, such a law would provide protection for health care professionals unwilling to be parties to killing their patients or helping them commit suicide, without intruding upon provincial jurisdiction.

The Protection of Conscience Project has repeatedly made this suggestion to Canadian parliamentarians, but its submissions have been ignored.

It is remarkable that the Canadian government clearly believes it is acceptable to compel citizens to become parties to homicide — killing other people — and punish them if they refuse. It is, perhaps, even more remarkable that Canadians are unwilling to talk openly about this.

Lack of evidence-based medicine in debate around new MAID law should concern Canadians

CBC News

Dr. Mark Sinyor

I recently had the privilege of testifying before the Senate of Canada in their deliberations about medical assistance in dying (MAID) legislation. The specific question before them was whether to allow the practice as a treatment for mental illness, which the Senate voted to recommend following an 18-month “sunset clause,” and the House of Commons says it would support with a two-year phase-in.

I have no personal objection to MAID in principle. But as a doctor and a psychiatrist who believes in evidence-based medicine, I found both the hearing and the result horrifying.

Bill C-7 would extend MAID to those experiencing intolerable suffering and who are not approaching the natural end of their lives, including those with mental illness. . . [Full text]

Mental illness should never be a death sentence

National Newswatch

Margaret Eaton

Anyone living with mental illness knows it can absolutely be grievous and even unbearable. However, what sets mental illness apart from all other types of suffering is that there always remains the hope of recovery. That’s why the Senate’s amendment to C-7, the assisted dying bill, is so concerning.

People with a mental health problem or illness need assistance to live and thrive, not hasten death. . . [Full text]

MAID for mental illness opens dangerous doors

Hamilton Spectator

K. Sonu Gaind, Sephora Tang

Last week the Canadian Senate voted to recommend a “sunset clause” on the exclusion of mental illness as a sole eligibility criterion for medical assistance in dying (MAID).

If ratified by the House of Commons, within 18 months people suffering solely from a mental illness will be able to request MAID. Some argue that prohibiting access to MAID for mental illness is unconstitutional and discriminatory. Unfortunately that claim is based on a superficial notion that anything being treated differently reflects undue discrimination. In reality, significant differences exist between illnesses that are mental in nature and those that are physical, such that removal of this prohibition would be more than merely discriminatory, it will be fatal for those who most need protection and care within a protective legal framework. . . [Full text]

How Bill C-7 will sacrifice the medical profession’s standard of care

Amendments to assisted dying laws are a stunning reversal of the central role of the medical and legal concept of the standard of care

Trudo Lemmens, Mary Shariff, Leonie Herx

As Parliament discusses Bill C-7’s expansion of the Medical Assistance in Dying (MAiD) Act, one issue has been conspicuously absent from public debate, even though it has major implications for medicine and for patients: the impact of the bill on the role of the medical profession in determining the standard of care, as it applies to MAiD.

The government introduced Bill C-7 in response to the decision of Quebec Superior Court Justice Christine Beaudouin (in the Truchon case), who ruled unconstitutional the current law’s limiting of MAiD to those whose natural death is “reasonably foreseeable.”. . . [Full Text]