[Article Updated Sept. 9, 2020]
By Brian Dryden, Canadian Catholic News
[OTTAWA – Canadian Catholic News] – A court decision handed down just before the Labour Day long weekend has cleared the way for an elderly Nova Scotia man to kill himself with the help of a doctor, in an ongoing bitter legal dispute between a husband and wife over a matter of life and death.
The Nova Scotia Appeal Court ruling on Sept. 4, 2020 effectively allows the husband to proceed with an assisted suicide through Canada’s medically-assisted death system, even though his wife is trying stop him from going through with his plan to kill himself.
The court decision that effectively ended a temporary injunction against the husband’s legal suicide, which had been approved by a medically-assisted death review panel, means that the man can be put to death legally before an already scheduled Sept. 24 court hearing seeking a permanent injunction to stop the assisted-suicide.
The Euthanasia Prevention Coalition (EPC), which is financing the wife’s challenge of her husband’s suicide, and her lawyer Hugh Scher, are critical of the logic behind allowing the temporary injunction be lifted now when there is another court hearing set.
“To schedule a hearing on the merits of the injunction for Sept. 24 and then lift the temporary injunction on Sept. 4, allowing him to die by lethal injection, makes a mockery of justice,” said Alex Schadenberg, executive director of the EPC.
Scher said conflicting medical opinions about the state of the husband’s health need to be fully vetted before euthanasia / assisted suicide should be allowed to proceed.
“The notion that individuals should be free to see 10 doctors who find they lack capacity, but then find two more that say they don’t to justify an assisted death is troubling and renders the safeguards and protections of the criminal law completely meaningless,” he said in a statement about the Sept. 4 ruling.
Nova Scotia Justice Elizabeth Van den Eynden said in her ruling that lifted the injunction that the law allows for a legal assisted-suicide in Canada and the case amounts “to wanting to relitigate issues that have been considered and decided by both the SCC (Supreme Court of Canada) and Parliament.”
The case features dueling medical opinions about the actual state of the husband’s medical conditions and mental health and what appears to be an unbridgeable rift within the marriage of the two seniors in their early-80s at the heart of the case.
The couple both have their own set of lawyers in the legal challenge to the way assessments are made for who can qualify for a legal assisted suicide under Canada’s euthanasia system.
The wife in the case claims her husband should not be qualify for medially assisted suicide / euthanasia because he does not suffer from a life ending illness and he isn’t mentally competent to request euthanasia. Her husband has argued, through his lawyer, that he is indeed ill with advanced chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) and is of sound mind to make his own choice.
Scher, who has stressed that there are “multiple medical opinions” concerning the husband’s health, said his client wants parliament, Nova Scotia’s legislature and the courts “to fix an arbitrary and broken legal process that permits the intentional killing by euthanasia of those who lack capacity and who don’t meet the most basic requirements of the law.”
“The Supreme Court of Canada made clear that legalization of euthanasia in Canada depended completely on parliament’s ability to implement reasonable safeguards to protect the most vulnerable of Canadians,” Scher said.
“Today’s decision by a single judge of a court of appeal on a procedural matter demonstrates how woefully inadequate the present regime and procedures are to protect vulnerable people lacking capacity from being put to death in Canada,” he said.
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Earlier article:
By Brian Dryden, Canadian Catholic News
[OTTAWA – Canadian Catholic News] – A legal battle between an elderly married couple in Nova Scotia over the husband’s wish to be allowed to kill himself with medical help has become a rallying cry for anti-euthanasia organizations in Canada, one of which is helping to assist the man’s wife in her effort to have the courts stop her husband from using Canada’s assisted-suicide system to take his life.
“We think it is an important case,” said Alex Schadenberg, executive director of the Euthanasia Prevention Coalition, which has been calling on EPC supporters to help contribute financially towards the legal costs of the case.
The case features dueling medical opinions about the actual state of the husband’s medical conditions and mental health and what appears to be an unbridgeable rift within the marriage of the two seniors in their early-80s at the heart of the case.
“This woman could not have carried out the legal proceedings and or file an appeal without the financial support of the EPC,” Schadenberg said.
“She stated that she loved her husband and that she wanted to launch a legal action to prevent her husband’s wrongful death, but she could not do so without help. EPC agreed to pay the bills,” he said.
In media reports about the ongoing case, which most recently was in court on Aug. 26, the married couple’s names have not been made public.
Court documents cited in media reports indicate the husband is claiming to be nearing the of his life because of advanced chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), but his wife claims he wants to kill himself because he is suffering from anxiety and mental delusions about his health.
Medical assessors who most recently dealt with the husband’s request for euthanasia approved his request for a medically-assisted death in July, but there is a dispute about that ruling because it was not the first time the husband had made a request for euthanasia and there are conflicting medical opinions about the state of the man’s health.
On Aug. 26, Nova Scotia Justice Elizabeth Van den Eynden set Sept. 24 as the date for when a hearing on a permanent injunction against the assisted-suicide request will be heard but she also was asked to rule on a whether to keep a temporary injunction blocking the husband’s death by suicide in place.
On that issue, the judge reserved her decision.
“This is a very time-sensitive matter,” Van den Eynden said during the hearing the Canadian Press reported. “I am going to give it my priority attention and endeavour to get a decision out as quickly as possible.”
The couple both have their own set of lawyers in what is considered to be an important legal challenge to the way assessments are made for who can qualify for a legal assisted suicide under Canada’s medically-assisted suicide system.
The wife in the case claims her husband should not be considered for euthanasia because he does not suffer from a life ending illness and he isn’t mentally competent to request medically-assisted death. Her husband has argued, through his lawyer, that he is indeed ill and is of sound mind to make his own choice.
When the wife in the case first approached EPC for help, EPC helped her get a lawyer who has long been involved in cases challenging the spread and normalization of euthanasia in Canada.
Her Toronto-based lawyer Hugh Scher thinks the case may eventually make its way to the Supreme Court.
“What I think this court case speaks to fundamentally is the need to have a dispute resolution process through the courts in those rare cases where there is a fundamental disagreement or conflict between multiple experts that needs to be resolved, because they’re coming to completely alternate positions about the question of whether the person meets the criteria or not,” Scher told CTV News in an interview.
The legal argument submitted by Scher on behalf of the wife in the case says that the husband “has made three separate requests for MAiD (medical assistance in dying)” and in the past some of the medical assessors examining his request to access the medically-assisted suicide system have determined the husband’s health “conditions do not meet the criteria for reasonably foreseeable death as required by law.”
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