To the many niet of Ottawa that the Legault government had to endure (single tax report, immigration, etc.), we must add a new one, fresh from this week.
On Wednesday, three CAQ ministers (Sonia Bélanger, Jean-François Roberge and Simon Jolin-Barrette) appeared at a press conference to implore Ottawa to harmonize its law on medical assistance in dying (AMM) with that of of Quebec.
Advance requests
The challenge? Advance requests for marketing authorization. Example: a person who begins to suffer from Alzheimer’s disease could, as long as they are considered “fit”, ask to end their life when they reach a certain stage of the disease. Currently, anyone applying for MAID must prove they are fit until the end.
On advance requests, the consensus in Quebec is solid. Our law, which contains guidelines, was adopted unanimously in June 2023. But some (including our three ministers) believe that the Canadian Criminal Code currently prohibits any advance request that Quebec law would allow.
- Listen to the political meeting between Antoine Robitaille and Benoît Dutrizac via QUB :
Hence the call for the Trudeau government to add to its law an amendment to the Criminal Code allowing Quebec to “move forward with advance requests”.
But on Friday, sources confirmed to The Gazette that the Trudeau government was going to reject Quebec.
The trap
All this could have been avoided a long time ago, if only the Legault government had had more constitutional backbone.
Quebec could have moved forward, implemented its law, without harmonization.
Because our government has jurisdiction in this matter. How could this have escaped the Legault government, which prides itself on being autonomist?
However, he was warned.
Notably by Véronique Hivon, in parliamentary committee, in March 2023. Harmonization would amount to setting “a trap for ourselves, because this would have the effect of rejecting the very heart” of our law “that is, the anticipated, unforeseen request to date at the federal level, even though it falls perfectly within our areas of jurisdiction.” (The constitutionalist Patrick Taillon has repeatedly, in Qub, supported a similar point of view.)
The former PQ MP and minister recalled that if we had waited for the federal government in the 2010s, the law on end-of-life care would never have been adopted in 2014.
Thanks to this audacity, the Supreme Court of Canada (SCC), the following year, completely changed its position on the end of life. In 1992, in the Sue Rodriguez case, the SCC maintained that the “right to life” prohibited any MAiD type gesture. In 2015, it was the opposite: the “right to life” required laws allowing such care.
Autonomist?
On Wednesday, our trio of ministers therefore chose to count in its constitutional net by publicly affirming that Quebec must wait for the federal government for its law to apply. Why has a government that calls itself nationalist, autonomist, chosen to undermine a recognized jurisdiction of Quebec? This is incomprehensible to me.