Liberals won’t make major changes to assisted dying bill
Even as it faces the prospect of fending off opposition from within its own caucus, the government has signalled that it’s not prepared to make any major changes to its proposed law on physician-assisted dying.
On Tuesday afternoon, Government House Leader Dominic LeBlanc confirmed that he will not be sending the bill to committee before second reading — a rare, but not unheard of procedural move that is usually reserved for particularly complex legislation.
Once legislation has been passed at second reading, it is deemed to have garnered approval in principle. That limits the committee, which will look at it after second reading, to minor, technical tweaks to the text, lest it goes beyond the scope of the bill as adopted, albeit provisionally, by the Commons as a whole.
Had the Liberals instead chosen to let committee members review — and, if so inclined, amend — the bill before putting it to the House for a vote, those MPs could have made far more substantive changes. The bill is set to begin debate on Friday, and could be sent to committee by the end of the week, where it will likely come under heavy scrutiny from all sides of the Chamber.
Several Liberal MPs have gone public with their concerns over the bill, which took a far more narrow approach than was recommended by the special joint committee tasked with studying the issue earlier this year.
LeBlanc has already indicated that it will be a free vote, which means Liberal MPs will be expressly permitted to vote against the bill without penalty.
In its landmark 2015 decision, the Supreme Court gave the then Conservative government one year to bring in a new law. That deadline was initially set for Feb. 6, but the court agreed to give the new government a four-month extension, which is due to run out in June. That gives the Liberals just 23 sitting days to steer the bill through both the House and Senate before the previous law expires.