OTTAWA — Parliament could be approaching a deadlock as Senators prepare to debate Friday whether to concede to elected officials or fight the House of Commons on amendments to medically assisted dying legislation.
After the Senate voted 64-12 Wednesday night to significantly amend Bill C-14 and send it to the House of Commons, MPs voted 190-108 Thursday to return it back again, accepting a few of the amendments but rejecting the most significant one.
That’s the amendment by Sen. Serge Joyal, which would replace the bill’s eligibility requirements with wording from the Supreme Court’s Carter decision.
That would remove clauses that require people to be terminally ill and their death to be “reasonably foreseeable” before physicians can help them die.
Joyal said Thursday he won’t back down, challenging other Senators to consider this in “solemn conscience.” He said, “it’s a vote on discriminating, it’s not a vote on regulating.”
He’s not the only one.
“If they’ve stripped out the main amendment that the Senate made then I won’t vote for the bill,” said Sen. Jim Cowan, leader of the Senate Liberals. “My position would be that we should stick to our guns.”
But other senators are more cautious — likely conscious, too, of the optics of having an unelected body stall or kill government legislation.
Sen. Don Plett said he would listen to any further amendments from senators, but added, “I cannot in all good conscience just simply vote down a bill that is better than nothing at all.”
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said in Burnaby, B.C. he was “encouraged” by the seriousness of the Senate’s recommendations but with Bill C-14, “we do not want to affect the fundamental balance that we achieved.”
In Ottawa, Justice Minister Jody Wilson-Raybould and Health Minister Jane Philpott continued to urge parliamentarians to get the law into place as soon as possible.
Meanwhile, Liberal MP Rob Oliphant, who co-chaired the joint committee on assisted dying and has been one of the few Liberal opponents of Bill C-14, decided to vote in favour of the bill in the House.
An Ontario judge ruled Wednesday without federal legislation in place, people would have to seek the approval of a judge before requesting physician-assisted death.
In light of that decision, Oliphant said he believes legislation is “now urgently required” despite the bill being “significantly flawed.”
But Joyal said this is “not something that you push people around like a herd of sheep to move in one direction.”
If there is a deadlock, the Senate could ask the House of Commons to have the bill parsed by the Supreme Court, something Joyal said he is considering.
New Democrat MP Murray Rankin, who voted against the bill, said he, too, would support that idea.
Criticizing the government for taking less than a day to “swat down” what the Senate agreed on, he said, “if (the government is) so sure of it, despite all the opposition and all the evidence to the contrary, why don’t they send it to the court in a reference case? The court can put it straight.”
If the ping-pong continues, it’s possible to invoke a “conference” with representatives from both houses, which hasn’t happened in almost 70 years. If even that fails, the bill dies on the order paper.
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