Mental health exclusion for assisted death likely temporary: Lametti

The federal government’s bill to expand eligibility for medical assistance in dying appears to be in for a rough ride in the Senate.

Justice Minister David Lametti was grilled about Bill C-7 Monday by members of the Senate’s legal and constitutional affairs committee, which has launched a pre-study of the bill before it is passed by the House of Commons.

Several senators challenged Lametti on why the bill expressly prohibits people suffering solely from mental illnesses from seeking medical assistance to end their lives.

They argued that the exclusion is unconstitutional and predicted it will wind up being struck down by the courts.

“I believe that what you’re putting forward with this bill will ultimately be invalidated by the courts,” said Conservative Sen. Claude Carignan.

The government is putting a “huge burden” on people suffering intolerably from mental illnesses, forcing them to fight for their right to assisted dying in court, Carignan added.

Another Conservative senator, Pierre-Hugues Boisvenu, echoed that prediction. And he reminded Lametti that senators tried to warn the government in 2016, when it first legalized assisted dying, that the law would be struck down because it restricted the procedure only to those whose natural death was reasonably foreseeable.

The Senate voted to amend the original bill to scrap the near-death proviso but the government rejected the amendment and senators ultimately acquiesced to the will of the elected House of Commons.

As some senators had predicted, the near-death requirement was struck down last fall by the Quebec Superior Court. Bill C-7 is meant to bring the law into compliance with that ruling.

The bill would scrap reasonably foreseeable death as a requirement for an assisted death. It would retain the concept to set out easier eligibility rules for those who are near death and more stringent rules for those who aren’t.