A national solution

As of Thursday, terminally ill patients who seek help to end their lives, and any doctors prepared to help them, would violate Canada’s Criminal Code if they went ahead with their plans.

Yet in one province (Quebec), there is now a law that makes it perfectly legal to ask for help in dying, and for doctors to provide it.

Whatever one thinks of this morally fraught issue, it is in no one’s interest for patients, their families and physicians to have to pick their way through a conflicting patchwork of federal and provincial laws, hoping they don’t end up caught in a legal nightmare to add to their medical woes.

But that is exactly where they find themselves. As the federal government works toward crafting a badly needed national law on assisted dying, Quebec has insisted on forging ahead with its own rules.

Unwisely, it has rejected appeals from Ottawa to delay implementing its new law while a national solution is developed.

Even worse, medically assisted dying, an issue that above all should be considered apart from day-to-day politics, is being turned into a contest of wills between Ottawa and Quebec City.

To its great credit, Quebec spent several years developing legislation on assisted dying, which it passed in July 2014. The law sets out strict rules, under which doctors are allowed to administer lethal injections only to fully competent adults who are in an advanced state of irreversible decline, with no reasonable chance of relief. It’s the kind of approach that could well serve as a model for a national law.

But the inconvenient truth remains that however well-intentioned, the Quebec law violates two sections of the Criminal Code. Article 14 says that no person “is entitled to consent to have death inflicted on him.” And Article 241 states that anyone who “aids or abets a person to commit suicide” can be imprisoned for up to 14 years.

The Supreme Court of Canada struck down those sections as unconstitutional last January, but they are still in force — and Ottawa has asked the court for another six months to develop a replacement law. A judge in Quebec ruled last week that the new provincial law contradicts the Criminal Code, but the Quebec government appealed that decision and declared that it would go into effect as scheduled on Thursday.

This legal tangle is completely unnecessary. Quebec argues, dubiously, that assisted suicide is a strictly medical issue — and therefore falls under provincial jurisdiction. Ottawa, it says, should just butt out, turning this into another round in the endless fed-prov wars.

It would be far wiser for the province to step back and give the new Trudeau government some breathing space to develop a nationwide reform.

The Supreme Court has made it clear that the Criminal Code sections banning assisted suicide must go, but with a federal election intervening last year it wasn’t possible for Ottawa to come up with new legislation.

A new law on assisted suicide may affect every Canadian, and will touch on deeply held personal, moral and religious beliefs. Taking a few more months to get it right and put in place a humane, well-thought-out national framework is the right way to go.