The bulk of the meeting of November 27 was consumed by a presentation by Bill Sullivan QC on the topic of The Right to Die, which subsumed the question of physician-assisted suicide. Several seminal cases have come before the courts in recent years, and, to a degree, have strained the definition of Stare Decisis ('courts are bound by decisions of prior panels unless a superior court or legislation undermines the applicable principles'). Most people are aware of R v. Rodriguez, a 1983 decision, but are perhaps less aware of the strictures of the Criminal Code, from which fear has been generated even to the extent of a belief that by simply accompanying a person flying to a more permissive jurisdiction (the Netherlands, Switzerland, for example,) a relative might well be committing a crime. The principle of an individual having exclusive domain over his or her body became submerged in much rhetoric over relatives' influence, temporary disabilities and other impediments to personal autonomy.
The trial judge (whose decision stands unless a provincial court of appeal and/or the Supreme Court of Canada) in Carter v. Canada, a decision of 2013, reviewed the principles of fundamental justice, a jurisprudential quagmire made the more complex by recent decisions pursuant to the Charter. That legislation essentially allowed an interpretation of one's control over one's body to be determined by a person's right to decide on life's termination, subject however to a complication engendered by different provinces deciding when persons are differently enabled to decide on their fate. One appreciates that if the age of majority is subject to jurisdictional differences, how many other issues are undecided.
But we are far from a judicial determination as to exactly where we stand. The Supreme Court of Canada handed the Harper government one year to pass appropriate legislation respecting rights and safeguards, but presumably through indifference or dislike, nothing was effected, leaving the new government effectively with a tabula rasa. If one per uses the plethora of counsel appearing in these seminal cases as a guide, one appreciates that many constitutional and healthcare counsel are looking forward to robust futures.
