New suicide bill fixes flaws

Senate version requires 2-week wait, protection for doctors and patients

A new assisted-suicide bill presented in the Senate proposes that suffering people who decide to end their lives with a doctor’s help must wait two weeks to do so, and that the physicians involved will not be held criminally liable for their actions.

The bill would decriminalize physician-assisted suicide as well as “voluntary euthanasia,” subject to myriad conditions, then leave it up to provincial governments to ensure no abuse. The bill would also require two doctors to sign off on a patient’s request, creating a 14-day waiting period during which the request could be recanted.

These and other details differentiate the Senate bill from a similar bill in the House of Commons that is unlikely to see debate before the 2015 federal election.

The two senators behind the bill say their wording provides greater protections than the Commons bill does for doctors, patients and third parties who could be involved in a person’s decision to end their life. Conservative Sen. Nancy Ruth also said the Senate bill doesn’t require doctors or patients to do anything they don’t want to.

“This bill is fundamentally about choice,” she told reporters on Tuesday.

“It doesn’t coerce anybody — not a physician, not a patient, not a family member, nobody. It is simply to provide a choice, another choice for Canadians in how they choose to end their lives.”

The Canadian Medical Association has said that if parliamentarians legalize assisted suicide they must ensure doctors won’t be forced to do something against their personal beliefs, and must protect vulnerable patients from potential abuse.

“If you look at other jurisdictions where this has been enacted … these kinds of things in the Senate bill have been enacted and have served to ease concerns,” said Dr. Chris Simpson, president of the Canadian Medical Association. “I think it’s a great place to start the discussion.”

The introduction of the bill in the Senate starts a political debate on the right to die that Conservative MP Steven Fletcher has long sought. Fletcher has two private member’s bills in the Commons, but they are so low in the order of precedence that there is almost no chance they will be debated there before Canadians head to the polls next year.

One of Fletcher’s bills would legalize physician-assisted suicide. The other would provide a national oversight body.

The Senate bill doesn’t include the oversight body, for constitutional reasons: Such a body would cost the government money, and the Senate isn’t permitted to introduce a money bill.

Sen. Ruth and Senate Liberal Larry Campbell believe they have enough support from their respective caucuses to get the bill to a final vote in the upper chamber.

Ruth said, however, that at least four Conservatives won’t support the bill, while Campbell expected that a few Senate Liberals to also oppose it for personal or religious reasons.

The duo also said Tuesday they expect opponents, and perhaps even the Conservative leadership in the Senate, to pull out procedural tricks in an attempt to prevent debate from occurring at all.

But “we don’t fight on hills that we don’t think we can take,” Campbell said. “I see no reason to hold this up.”