There may actually be all sorts of reasons, moral or other, to think otherwise, but from a strictly legal standpoint, the bill as it is worded creates a very real problem. I am a practising lawyer and I have clients, including groups of disabled individuals. Some of those groups have asked us to consider this scenario. In such a fundamental bill, it is important to generate some legal certainty for Canadians. The standards and the rules of the game must be clear for everyone.
This bill proposes a standard to enable access to medical assistance in dying, but the issue, with all due respect, is that this is not the standard from section 7 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms as set out by the Supreme Court in the Carter decision. When a more narrow standard is adopted to cover end of life and similar issues, the problem lies in the fact that a void is being created. In fact, those individuals who do not meet the end-of-life conditions included in Bill C-14, but who do meet the conditions related to grievous and irremediable illness from the Carter decision, want to have the right to access medical assistance in dying. The Supreme Court decision truly applied to those individuals.
The Supreme Court did base its decision on end-of-life criteria. It did not wonder whether the individuals were really at the end of their life. That is not a factor the court considered. It talks about people suffering from grievous and irremediable conditions, some of which may lead to a sooner end of life. When the court gave section 7 all its scope, it did so consciously, I believe, in order to ensure a broader reach than that ensured by the bill.
The problem is that, by setting limits as has been done in this case, there is a risk of overlooking some of the people who have the constitutional right to access medical assistance in dying. This bill will take away that right or force those who want to exercise it to start from scratch again before the courts, so that the Supreme Court would once again fill that void. Two, three or four years down the road, the House of Commons—Parliament—will have to amend its legislation again.
The Barreau du Québec does not feel that this is desirable, especially when it comes to individuals with a grievous and irremediable medical condition who would have to engage in a legal battle again. That is not what we should aim for as a society.
We can agree or disagree. The Supreme Court may have gone too far, but we are talking about the Supreme Court and the law of the land. We cannot ignore this for the sake of other principles.
As for the criterion whereby death must be reasonably foreseeable, we have a similar problem in Quebec, as well. In fact, the criterion whereby the individual must be at the end of their life is also being debated. We are in the process of applying the legislation, and there are issues with this. As the criterion can sometimes be too nebulous, the position may vary from one physician to the next. Some are saying that, to be considered at the end of life, people have to be dying, terminally ill, while others are talking about three or six months. It is clear that reasonably foreseeable death is an excessively vague criterion. For Canadians, it is important that legal standards be clear, applicable and easy to understand for everyone.
We have held a long debate in Quebec to decide whether it was desirable to establish a time frame—such as six months or three months. The issue is that medical science is unable to predict whether the time frame will be three months or six months, depending on the individual. Therefore, we have decided that it would be preferable to give physicians an opportunity to use their discretion.
However, the problem is that, with nebulous criteria, Canadians' rights become more or less elastic, and that leads to problems. Taking into account those problems, as well as the scope of the Carter decision, we have recommended that this criterion simply be removed from the legislation.