A decision regarding the expansion of medical assistance in dying expected

(Ottawa) John Scully wants to know if he can have medical assistance in dying, if he wishes.

The former war correspondent suffers from a serious mental illness, which includes symptoms of depression, anxiety and post-traumatic stress disorder.

He is speaking again as the Liberals must make a decision very soon on the expansion of medical assistance in dying, which should come into force in March.

Medical assistance in dying has been legal since 2016 in Canada. In 2021, an expansion of eligibility criteria was approved to include people whose only medical condition is mental illness.

This change was supposed to come into effect in March 2023, but was delayed for a year by the Liberal government, due to concerns about the consequences it could have.

Those who oppose the change, including some disability rights activists, have expressed concern about whether it would further open the door to abuse and coercion. These opponents wonder whether people who would then choose to end their lives do not instead need more support, including better access to housing and mental health care.

A special committee of parliamentarians was tasked last fall with assessing whether the health system was ready for this change. The Liberals must now choose whether or not to move forward with expanding the criteria.

Justice Minister Arif Virani told The Canadian Press last month that he would carefully review the committee’s recommendations, opening the door to further delaying the plan to broaden the criteria.

John Scully says he regularly has terrible nightmares due to his career as a journalist, depriving him of sleep.

The 82-year-old says he has tried “every treatment method known to science” and nothing has worked. He has attempted suicide twice and doesn’t want to do it again.

“I want some peace and I want some calm in my death,” he said in an interview Monday.

What John Scully wants is the ability to die with medical assistance. “It’s not a definitive “I want to die now.” It’s an alternative to suicide,” he says.

“I want the peace of mind of knowing that [l’aide médicale à mourir] is an option for me and for all people like me who cannot or do not want to talk about the suffering and the hell they are going through and avoid the hell of suicide. »

Senator Stan Kutcher, a Nova Scotia psychiatrist, has spoken in favor of expanding the law to include mental illness. He was part of the committee and maintains that the courts have ruled that Canadians’ requests for access to medical assistance in dying must be assessed on a case-by-case basis. He expects the Attorney General of Canada to “adhere to the Charter.”

But while the senator and other supporters of broadening the criteria argue that excluding people with mental illness is discriminatory and would likely lead to future legal challenges, a constitutional lawyer says there remains “big question marks” on this issue.

“Anyone can sue, anyone can challenge the Charter,” explains Kerri Froc, a law professor at the University of New Brunswick.

Kerri Froc was among the legal and medical experts consulted by the committee. The lawyer argues that any potential legal challenge on the question of whether people whose only medical problem is mental illness can resort to medical assistance in dying would be “highly conditional” on the facts presented.

Others, like Jocelyn Downie, a professor at Dalhousie University in Halifax, told The Canadian Press last month that another delay in expanding the criteria could force people who are suffering intolerably to have to go in court, as others have done in the past.

The federal government legalized medical assistance in dying after a decision by the Supreme Court of Canada in 2015, which ruled that the part of the Criminal Code prohibiting doctors from administering it in situations where a person was suffering from a “grave and irremediable illness” was unconstitutional, whether it was an illness, disease or disability.

The law was revised in 2021 following a 2019 judicial decision by the Superior Court of Quebec, which found it unconstitutional to require medical assistance in dying to be limited to a person whose natural death was “reasonably foreseeable”.

However, during a debate on the bill aimed at modifying the legislation on medical assistance in dying to reflect this decision, the Senate also concluded that it was necessary to include those whose only medical problem cited is an illness mental. The House of Commons accepted this change and the bill was passed.

The reactions were immediate.

More than 30 law professors signed an open letter last year saying it was “unwise” to suggest that the constitutional right to medically assisted dying for these patients would be recognized by the courts.

John Scully said Monday that if the Canadian government decided to delay this broadening of the criteria again, the only option left would be suicide. He said it would amount to “a betrayal of anyone who suffers terribly from mental illness.”