How Bill C7 will sacrifice the medical profession's Standard of Care: Professor Trudo Lemmens for Policy Options

Faculty of Law Professor Trudo Lemmens, Scholl Chair in Health Law and Policy and a professor with the University of Toronto's Dalla Lana School of Public Health and Joint Centre for Bioethics, along with Dr. Mary Shariff (University of Manitoba Law) and Dr. Leonie Herx (Queen's University School of Medicine), write for Policy Options on Bill C-7's expansion of the Medical Assistance in Dying (MAiD) Act:

"As Parliament discusses Bill C-7’s expansion of the Medical Assistance in Dying (MAiD) Act, one issue has been conspicuously absent from public debate, even though it has major implications for medicine and for patients: the impact of the bill on the role of the medical profession in determining the standard of care, as it applies to MAiD.

The government introduced Bill C-7 in response to the decision of Quebec Superior Court Justice Christine Beaudouin (in the Truchon case), who ruled unconstitutional the current law’s limiting of MAiD to those whose natural death is “reasonably foreseeable.”

Bill C-7 addresses Justice Beaudouin’s finding – which in our opinion should have been appealed instead – by introducing a second track of access to MAiD for people with chronic illness or disability whose death is not reasonably foreseeable. For the second track, Bill C-7 imposes a 90-day assessment period, which can be shortened when deemed appropriate; a second eligibility assessment by a medical practitioner with expertise in the condition that is causing the person’s suffering; and two strengthened “informed consent” provisions, including an obligation for physicians to ensure that their patients have given “serious consideration” to other options." 

Read the full opinion at Policy Options