Proposed legislation provides ‘little or no safeguards and no effective oversight’
By Deborah Gyapong
OTTAWA (CCN)
Caption: Hugh Scher
Constitutional lawyers opposed euthanasia and assisted-suicide are divided on whether passing Bill C-14 without further amendments is preferable to no bill at all.
Euthanasia Prevention Coalition’s legal counsel Hugh Scher said it is important to have a bill that addresses the Supreme Court of Canada’s Carter decision with “comprehensive safeguards to protect vulnerable people from the risk of abuse.”
“The existing bill does not do that,” he said. The bill provides “little or no safeguards and no effective oversight;” and it does not provide for a prior review by a judge or a tribunal.
Scher said he would like to see the bill improved to provide an adequate level of safeguards and oversight. “Failing that we may be better off with no bill and simply have litigation over specific issues,” he said.
Catholic Civil Rights League president and constitutional lawyer Phil Horgan has said the League’s position is Bill C-14 as it stands remains a worse proposal than the law that would exist post June 6 in the absence of its passage.”
Under the Carter decision, only physicians would be allowed, not nurse practitioners as the bill allows, and it would leave the Criminal Code’s section on administration of a noxious substance in place, Horgan said. The bill would allow anyone to help a patient take a prescribed lethal drug.
Alberta-based Constitutional lawyer Gerry Chipeur, who also opposes euthanasia and assisted suicide, disagrees and warns without the bill, Canada will be left with a legal vacuum similar to that on abortion.
“Nothing could be more critical than getting this bill passed,” Chipeur said. “This bill is a tremendous bill, much more restrictive than Carter.”
He noted a recent Alberta Court of Appeal interpretation of the Carter decision means “without federal legislation,” Carter “gives carte blanche to physicians to kill everyone.”
“Under Carter as interpreted by the Court of Appeal, in the absence of federal legislation, 100 per cent of the population is at risk of being killed by their physician or their nurse.”
Under Bill C-14, the number qualified to be killed by their caregiver is less than one per cent, he said.
Even with the present wording, Bill C-14 limits access to assisted death to those at end of life, Chipeur said. “That is the most significant limitation one can imagine. It means the person is going to be dead anyway within a few months, so the potential for abuse is extremely limited.”
“When the choice is between a regime like abortion- on-demand and a regime that protects 99.9 per cent of citizens, there is nothing to talk about,” he said, noting he hoped the Senate will pass some amendments to make the bill even stronger.
“Without Bill C-14, the provinces and territories will have no basis on which to pass ethical or civil rights statutes to govern how physicians and nurses interact with their patients at the end of life,” he said.
“C-14 creates the floor upon which you put the furniture of a hospital system that is going to deal with end-of-life care,” he said. The provinces and territories cannot legislate the criminal law, he stressed.
“In the absence of a floor, there is no place to put the furniture,” he said. “It means physicians in Quebec will be able to in effect ignore the Quebec law, because there’s going to be very little consequence.”
As soon as the federal government advocated defining what was acceptable in abortion, everything up to murdering the child while it is already born has become allowable in Canada, he said.
“It is critical to have a federal strong bright line,” and then “build a provincial regime,” he said.
