Bill’s constitutionality backed

Re Limits on assisted suicide bill ‘unconstitutional,’ lawyer says, May 6 At the hearings of the Senate Standing Committee on assisted dying, an extremely important and sensitive topic, several witnesses presented contrasting opinions on the constitutionality of the government’s bill.

Yet this headline quotes Joseph Arvay’s view that the bill is “unconstitutional,” and more than half the article is spent elaborating on his views. It also fails to mention that, as a lawyer for the British Columbia Civil Liberties Association, which is lobbying hard against the bill, he has a professional interest in this matter.

Constitutional law expert Dianne Pothier’s testimony in support of the constitutionality of the bill is not even mentioned. She has no professional financial interest in this debate and has clearly as much if not more credentials when it comes to constitutional law.

I presented at this hearing as well, but I did not elaborate on the constitutional question, even though I do support professor Pothier’s views on the constitutional issues in relation to the bill. Trudo Lemmens, professor and Scholl chair in Health Law and Policy, Faculty of Law, University of Toronto The article by Tonda MacCharles quotes me as telling the Parliamentary Committee on Bill C-14 that the “fears of a ‘slippery slope’ were justified.” I said no such thing.

What I did say was that just over a quarter of a million people die in our country each year. If one extrapolates the 4 per cent euthanasia rate in Holland, that equates to ten thousand euthanasia deaths in Canada each year.

This was not meant as rhetoric or posturing. Those are simply how the numbers add up. Dr. Harvey Max Chochinov, Winnipeg