VANCOUVER – Forcing sick patients to suffer through painful, agonizing deaths without the ability to ask a doctor to help them end their lives is akin to “torture,” a lawyer told the British Columbia Court of Appeal on Wednesday as he argued for the legalization of physician-assisted suicide. Joseph Arvay, who represents several plaintiffs in a case that saw the law struck down last year, said the ban on assisted suicide leads some patients with terminal illnesses to end their lives early, because they know they won’t be able to seek a doctor’s help if they become debilitated later. He said the federal government is forcing those patients to make a cruel choice between suicide and suffering. “The choice for those people is, if they comply with the law, they will suffer, and for some of the people the suffering could be tantamount to torture,” Arvay told a three-judge appeal panel.
The Supreme Court of Canada said today it will hear an appeal by the BC Civil Liberties Association (BCCLA) that could grant terminally ill Canadians the right to assisted suicide. The case seeks to allow seriously and incurably ill but mentally competent adults the right to receive medical assistance to hasten death under specific safeguards. Lawyer Grace Pastine, who will argue the case for the BCCLA, says the decision to hear the appeal is a victory for those who support the right to to die with dignity. "I'm feeling great now. This is an enormous relief, and I'm just so happy that now there will be an opportunity to argue this very important case in front of the Supreme Court of Canada," Pastine told CBC News on Thursday morning. Several witnesses in the case are very ill and the BCCLA applied to have it expedited. But the high court rejected that, and as is customary, it gave no reasons. That means the hearing to determine the future of assisted suicide in Canada will l
The SCC has agreed to hear the appeal in the Carter case, a case about physician assisted dying, from the British Columbia Court of Appeal (BCCA). Both of the terminally ill patients involved in the Carter case, Gloria Taylor and Kay Carter, have now passed away but the British Columbia Civil Liberties Association will be arguing the case at the SCC. In June 2012, Madam Justice Lynn Smith of the B.C. Supreme Court found the current Criminal Code provision that prohibits assisted suicide to be unconstitutional. Justice Smith found that section 241(b) of the Criminal Code breaches the claimants’ rights under both sections 7 and 15 of the Charter. She further decided that those infringements are not justifiable under s. 1 of the Charter. In October 2013, the BCCA disagreed. The BCCA overturned the decision of Justice Smith on the basis that the constitutionality of section 241 with respect to section 7 and section 1 of the Charter was decided in Rodriguez v. British Columbia (Attorney