LIBERALS ELBOW THEIR WAY TO MAJOR WIN.
It was touch and go, chaotic, messy. But the government got Bill C- 14, the law on assisted dying, through the Commons and the Senate, essentially intact, before the summer recess. Few believed this possible a month ago. It is a major win for the Liberals, the political ripple effects of which will be felt for years to come.
It was curious to see the reaction Friday as senators engaged in a final day of debate over C- 14, which Justice Minister Jody Wilson- Raybould and Health Minister Jane Philpott had shepherded into existence at breakneck speed, under the threat of a June 6 Supreme Court deadline that had come and gone with no law in place. Essentially, the response to the final vote of 44- 28 in favour was a collective yawn.
And yet this truly was a pivotal moment. It changed the course of Canadian social policy. And it established that Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s Senate reforms may not be an utter train wreck, after all.
Let us recall that, just four weeks ago, the evening of Wednesday, May 18, Trudeau inadvertently struck New Democrat MP Ruth Ellen Brosseau quite sharply in the chest with his elbow, as he half- dragged Conservative whip Gord Brown through a gaggle of NDP MPs who had been playing vote-delay rugby on the floor of the House of Commons. This occurred in the context of Motion 6, which Government House leader Dominic LeBlanc had brandished as a kind of political nuclear option, intended to cow the opposition into line on C-14. The government was playing hardball, threatening to unilaterally seize control of Commons procedure. Opposition MPs were apoplectic.
Adding to the general toxicity was a plan by Democratic Institutions Minister Maryam Monsef to stack the government’s democratic- reform committee with Liberal MPs, while grimly insisting a promised change in the country’s 150- yearold electoral system must not be put to a referendum. These two moves together had shredded Liberal claims to any moral high ground on democratic reform. Indeed, it appeared in early May that they intended, astonishingly, to try to impose their own preferred electoral mode, the ranked ballot, on the country.
Then came The Elbow Felt Around the World, and the subsequent apologies and recriminations. That sideswiped Commons debate for several days and threw LeBlanc’s legislative schedule out the window. Pushing C- 14 through the Senate by June 6 became a near- impossibility. And that was assuming the Senate agreed to pass the law at all. Riled into a rare state of hyper- awareness by two years of Mike Duffy scandal blowback, various senators were rearing up on their hind legs and trashing the legislation. Among the most ardent critics were Senate Liberals, formerly Liberal senators, who had been unceremoniously booted from the party’s national caucus in 2014.
But then several things happened, simultaneously. The government in its post- elbow state of humility abandoned Motion 6. On June 2, it capitulated on electoral reform, agreeing to staff the parliamentary committee along proportional lines. A day before t hat, ministers Wilson-Raybould a nd Philpott appeared before the Senate and meticulously deconstructed t he various criticisms levelled at C- 14 — most notably the clause deemed to restrict access only to people whose death is imminent ( a criticism not born out, I would argue, by the text of the legislation). The Senate was, wonder of wonders, doing its job. And so were the ministers.
So vociferous did the appointed “council of elders” become, t hat it seemed again last week that C- 14 was doomed, and Canada headed for a deadlock between the two houses of parliament. But although they threatened and railed and remonstrated, in the end the senators as a group ultimately acknowledged — explicitly so, in many of the speeches Friday — that the elected House of Commons had made a clear decision, to which they felt duty- bound to defer. It was, counterintuitively, a magnificent moment f or t he upper chamber. Freed from party control, free of any shackles at all really, save those of convention, they did the responsible thing.
C- 14, as it now stands, won’t be the last word. It will be scrutinized and challenged and an eventual return to the Supreme Court is probably inevitable.
But in the time between now and then, medically assisted death will be implemented by doctors and measured against the real world, and that experience will inform any future changes. If there are eventually to be “advanced directives,” or assisted deaths for people who are not yet terminally ill, this will be introduced methodically, under intense scrutiny, not under pressure of a prohibitive deadline.
The law as it stands represents a middle ground, which pleases neither critics on the left, nor the right — and appears all the wiser for that. This was an area so potentially divisive that the former Harper government chose to ignore it, Supreme Court ruling and all. That the Liberals succeeded, and the way they managed it, is evidence they’re learning as they go. And Trudeau’s elbow, quite bizarrely, may have been the trigger that turned the tide.
IT SEEMED AGAIN LAST WEEK THAT BILL C-14 WAS DOOMED.