By Brian Dryden, Canadian Catholic News
[Ottawa – CCN] – Canada’s senators are expected to give their verdict by the end of the day Feb. 17, 2021 on the federal government’s effort to make it easier for Canadians to legally commit suicide with the help of a doctor.
Senators agreed on Feb. 8 to debate the government’s Bill C-7 “according to the following themes”: mental illness and degenerative illness, safeguards and advance requests, vulnerable and minority groups, healthcare (including palliative care) and access to medical assistance in dying, and conscience rights.
The plan is to address each concern and then move on to the next theme in the order agreed before holding a final vote in the Senate.
The senators agreed that on Feb. 17, 2021, “the sitting shall not be adjourned before the Senate has decided upon the bill at third reading.”
While MPs representing all parties in the House of Commons passed Bill C-7 by a two-to-one margin on Dec. 10, 2020 – which along with eliminating the need for a person’s death being reasonability foreseeable to qualify for the euthanasia / assisted suicide system, Bill C-7 would also eliminate or ease some of the other safeguards in the law such as lowering the number of witnesses needed when a person consents to euthanasia.
The bill also eliminates a 10-day waiting period to perform an assisted suicide / euthanasia after consent is given, and opens the door to allowing for advanced directives that could see a person put to death even if they are mentally incapable of consenting when they actually use the euthanasia system.
Critics of expanding the medically-assisted death system (known as MAiD), say that hearings at the committee level in both the House of Commons and the Senate show that there is no consensus among Canadians, as the federal government claims, to make significant changes before a promised five-year review of medically-assisted suicide and palliative care options in Canada.
“Throughout the testimonies given at both the House of Commons’ Standing Committee on Justice and Human Rights and the Senate Standing Committee on Legal and Constitutional Affairs, it became evidently clear there is no consensus in Canada on the proposed expansion of euthanasia and assisted suicide in Canada, despite the Government’s claim to the contrary in order to justify the passing of Bill C-7,” Canada’s bishops said in a statement just before Christmas, when the bill was forwarded to the Senate.
While the Senate is now moving towards its final verdict on Bill C-7, some senators also say the federal government should not be changing the existing law which only took effect in 2016 until a full and promised parliamentary review of medically-assisted death in Canada is first undertaken.
“Colleagues, how did we get to this point, where we are debating an overhaul of our entire regime a few short years after its enactment and before we have even undertaken a parliamentary review?” asked Opposition Senate leader Don Plett on Feb. 8.
“As has been said before, we are here because of a lower court decision made by one judge, in one province, and because the government chose not to defend its own legislation,” he said.
Opponents of euthanasia/ assisted suicide have repeatedly questioned why the federal government did not appeal the Quebec Superior Court decision that prompted the changes that the federal government has put forward in Bill C-7.
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