FEDS GET ANOTHER MONTH TO REFORM ASSISTED-DYING LAW

The federal government was granted one more month Thursday to expand access to medical assistance in dying even as its efforts to do so stalled in the House of Commons. Quebec Superior Court Justice Martin Sheehan agreed to give the government a fourth extension — until March 26 — to bring the law into compliance with a 2019 court ruling. The decision came just one day before the previous deadline was to expire. The 2019 ruling struck down a provision in the law that allows assisted dying only for those whose natural deaths are “reasonably foreseeable.” Bill C-7 would expand access to assisted dying to intolerably suffering individuals who are not approaching the ends of their lives. However, the bill is stalled in the Commons, where the Conservatives refused for the third straight day Thursday to facilitate debate on a motion laying out the government's response to amendments passed last week by the Senate. The Conservatives largely opposed to the original bill and object even more strenuously to the amended version.