St. Albert MP Michael Cooper says he is ready to sit long into the night to get it right on the newly introduced medical aid in dying legislation.
Rules outlining who can access physician assisted dying and under what circumstances were released Thursday morning, leaving the government five sitting weeks to debate and amend the highly controversial legislation.
Cooper said while the government did a much better job crafting legislation than the special joint committee on which he served as Conservative lead, in his mind there is still much to be improved.
The legislation puts in safeguards to protect vulnerable individuals, such as requiring two independent medical opinions to determine eligibility and a 15-day waiting period. The individual seeking the service must make the request in writing, unless they are physically incapable, and beneficiaries cannot act as a witness to the request.
The individual must also be competent, suffering from a serious and incurable illness, disease or disability, in an advanced state of decline, and enduring intolerable physical and psychological suffering, with death becoming reasonably foreseeable.
Dying with Dignity Canada decried the bill saying they expected such violations of Charter rights from the former administration, but not the Liberals.
“These harsh, discriminatory rules fly in the face of that expectation and will create unfair barriers to access to medical aid in dying. We expected better,” said CEO Shanaaz Gokool. “(This legislation) could force thousands of Canadians with excruciating chronic illnesses to suffer against their will for years or even decades. Our hearts go out to these individuals and their families.”
Cooper was pleased to see that parts of the Conservatives dissenting report were taken into consideration by the Liberal government when crafting the legislation, namely the exclusion of mature minors and of individuals suffering from mental illness as their sole medical condition.
He was also pleased to see that the legislation does not allow for advance directives – although the wording seems to suggest the door is not permanently shut on any of those issues.
Cooper said it would have been irresponsible given the condensed timelines for the government to have moved forward on those matters without further study.
“Frankly there wasn’t sufficient time to review all of the issues and implications of advanced directives and mature minors in this short timeline,” he explained.
The bill calls for an automatic review of the legislation after five years of being enacted.
Although the Conservative government sat on the ruling for nearly nine months, Cooper says the current Liberal government deserves its “fait share of blame” for also not acting sooner. The committee had a month to collect expert testimony and put forward their recommendations.
Cooper was disappointed to see that a key Conservative recommendation was not heeded. The dissenting report urged the government to require individuals with underlying a mental illness to undergo an independent psychological assessment by a qualified mental health professional before making this “irreversible decision.”
“The overwhelming body of evidence before the committee was that physicians alone are not capable of undertaking that kind of assessment,” said Cooper.
He was also not in favour of nurse practitioners taking on the task of assessing patients eligibility to access medical aid in dying.
Equally as disappointing was that the lack of conscious protections for medical professionals who object to providing the service. Instead, the federals seem to have left it up to provincial jurisdictions and professional regulatory bodies to ensure this Charter right is respected, said Copper.
Now that the bill has been introduced, the government has five sitting weeks to debate and push through some kind of legislation surrounding medical aid in dying to avoid a legal vacuum and the chaos that could ensue.
Given the “highly complex and deeply sensitive” nature of the legislation, Conservatives will be free to vote according to their conscious, said Cooper, the same as MPs from other parties.
Cooper said he is not yet certain if he supports the legislation or not. While he feels the Liberals have fallen short in some areas, he recognizes that there is still opportunity to amend the bill.
To help inform his decision, Cooper will host a town hall to discuss medical aid in dying with constituents on Thursday April 28 at 7 p.m. at the St. Albert Inn.
