Like most Canadians, I don’t make it a habit to read judgments written by the Supreme Court of Canada. Rather, I rely on journalists and other specialists to provide summaries and analyses in relation to various cases decided by the court. It is perhaps also fair to say that the trust I place in these secondary sources mirrors the trust I place in the court itself.
But this has recently been put in question for me.
In the past several days, a doctor in the Quebec City region became the first in Canada to (legally) provide a patient with a lethal injectors on to end his or her life and suffering. This physician’s action was made legal by Quebec’s new assisted-death law and by the February 2015 judgment of the Supreme Court in Carter vs. Canada. More specifically, the legality of this assisted-death should be understood with reference to the Supreme Court’s follow-up decision last week, in which it granted the Federal Government four more months to craft legislation but also allowed the legislative vacuum in Quebec to be filled by that province’s new law.
It was after hearing these various news reports that I decided to go back and read the Carter decision for myself, in order to understand the arguments that have led to such a dramatic change in our moral and medical landscape. The result of my reading, I must say, is a greatly diminished trust in the Supreme Court of Canada. Continue reading
encrusted words 