A joint committee of parliamentarians was asked last fall to study the question whether the health-care system was ready and the Liberals now face the choice of whether to go ahead with broadening the rules.
Justice Minister Arif Virani told The Canadian Press last month he would look carefully at what the committee recommends, opening the door to once again pausing the plan to expand eligibility.
He sat on the committee that studied the issue last year and said he believes the courts have ruled that Canadians should have access to medical assistance in dying on a case-by-case basis.
But while the senator and other proponents of the expansion say excluding those with mental disorders amounts to discrimination and would likely lead to a future court challenge, one constitutional law expert says there remain “big question marks” on that issue.
Jocelyn Downie, a professor at Halifax’s Dalhousie University, told The Canadian Press last month that another delay on the expansion could force individuals who are suffering intolerably to have to go to court, as others have in the past.
The updated law Parliament passed in 2021 was also in response to a 2019 decision from the Superior Court of Quebec that found it was unconstitutional to make it a requirement that medically assisted dying be limited to someone whose natural death was “reasonably foreseeable.”
The original article contains 892 words, the summary contains 222 words. Saved 75%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!
This is the best summary I could come up with:
A joint committee of parliamentarians was asked last fall to study the question whether the health-care system was ready and the Liberals now face the choice of whether to go ahead with broadening the rules.
Justice Minister Arif Virani told The Canadian Press last month he would look carefully at what the committee recommends, opening the door to once again pausing the plan to expand eligibility.
He sat on the committee that studied the issue last year and said he believes the courts have ruled that Canadians should have access to medical assistance in dying on a case-by-case basis.
But while the senator and other proponents of the expansion say excluding those with mental disorders amounts to discrimination and would likely lead to a future court challenge, one constitutional law expert says there remain “big question marks” on that issue.
Jocelyn Downie, a professor at Halifax’s Dalhousie University, told The Canadian Press last month that another delay on the expansion could force individuals who are suffering intolerably to have to go to court, as others have in the past.
The updated law Parliament passed in 2021 was also in response to a 2019 decision from the Superior Court of Quebec that found it was unconstitutional to make it a requirement that medically assisted dying be limited to someone whose natural death was “reasonably foreseeable.”
The original article contains 892 words, the summary contains 222 words. Saved 75%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!