Senators likely to propose amendments to assisted dying bill

OTTAWA — It was out of the political frying pan and into the fire Monday for the Trudeau government’s bill to expand access to medically assisted dying.

Opening debate on Bill C-7 began in the Senate, where the government has no control over independent-minded, less-partisan senators who appear determined to amend the legislation.

Senators offered conflicting views on whether the bill is constitutional, does enough to protect people with disabilities, should be amended and even whether there’s any real urgency to deal with it this week.

In the House of Commons, the minority government faced delay tactics from a majority of Conservative MPs who vehemently oppose expanding assisted dying to intolerably suffering people who are not already near death.

But, with the Bloc Quebecois and NDP backing the bill, its eventual passage last Thursday was assured. The government did not have to make any significant amendments and it faced no political pressure to do more to help Canadians access medical assistance in dying (MAID).

That is not the case in the Senate, where the government can expect a flurry of amendments from both sides of the equation: senators who think the bill is unconstitutional because it goes too far and those who think it’s unconstitutional because it doesn’t go far enough.

Sen. Chantal Petitclerc, who is sponsoring the bill in the Senate, implored her colleagues Monday to think about the Canadians who are suffering intolerably as they wait for the bill to be passed.

“They are not statistics,” she said, reading off the names of Quebecers who have had to go to court for their right to an assisted death.

Petitclerc, a member of the Independent Senators Group, urged senators to deal with the bill thoroughly but expeditiously, without undue delays.

The government is pressuring senators to put the bill through all the legislative hoops by Friday, the court-imposed deadline for revamping Canada’s assisted dying regime.

Justice Minister David Lametti last week asked the court for more time, until Feb. 26, but the court has already granted two extensions and there’s no guarantee it will agree to a third.

The Justice Department’s lawyers have asked for that request to be heard Thursday.

Once opening debate on the bill concludes, it will be sent back to the Senate’s legal and constitutional affairs committee, which has already conducted a weeklong prestudy of the bill.

The committee has heard from dozens of witnesses but Petitclerc said in an interview that she expects more will be called. She, for one, wants to hear from more legal experts about the constitutionality of the bill.

The committee must then give clause-by-clause scrutiny to the bill, with members proposing and voting on amendments, before sending it back to the full Senate for final debate and likely more proposed amendments.

Conservative Senate leader Don Plett took issue Monday with the Senate being pressured to decide a life and death issue in a mere five days. He blamed the time crunch on the government’s decision last August to prorogue Parliament for six weeks, vaporizing the previous iteration of the bill and forcing it to start the legislative process all over again.

Sen. Peter Harder, the former government representative in the Senate who now sits with the Progressive Senate Group, suggested it would be more reasonable for the Senate to wrap up opening debate this week and let the legal affairs committee scrutinize the bill over the holiday break so that the Senate can conclude its deliberations upon its return in late January.

Harder also advised senators that he will not support any amendments that would alter the content of the bill or delay or block its passage. He argued that unelected senators have an even greater obligation to defer to the will of the House of Commons on a bill that was overwhelmingly approved by a majority of MPs from five parties in a minority Parliament.

But that is unlikely to deter other senators who believe the bill is unconstitutional.

Conservative Sen. Claude Carignan contended that the bill violates the charter of rights on two fronts: the explicit ban on MAID for people suffering solely from mental illnesses and the imposition of a 90-day assessment period for people who are not near death.