Canada's Euthanasia Law was no Slippery Slope; it was a Cliff

By Alex Schadenberg, 

An article by Yuan Yi Zhu, a Canadian academic [pictured right], that was published as a Special to the National Post on February 18, 2025 explains that 10 years after the Supreme Court of Canada Carter decision (that legalized assisted death in Canada) that Canada's MAiD law was not a slippery slope; it was a cliff. 

February marks the 10th anniversary of the Supreme Court of Canada’s decision in Carter v. Canada (Attorney General), in which the court unanimously ruled, against both basic logic and its own precedents, that the right to life, guaranteed by the Constitution, included the right to a state-assisted suicide through what came to be known euphemistically as “Medical Assistance in Dying” (MAiD).

At the time, the court dismissed evidence from other jurisdictions that the legalization of euthanasia inevitably led to its open-ended expansion as well as abuse against the vulnerable. Belgium’s disastrous euthanasia experiment, which saw children and people with psychiatric disorders dying at the hands of doctors, was, the court said, the “product of a very different medico-legal culture…. We should not lightly assume that the regulatory regime will function defectively, nor should we assume that other criminal sanctions against the taking of lives will prove impotent against abuse.” There would be no slippery slope, the court promised us.

Expect More From Government

http://www.pentictonwesternnews.com/opinion/letters/385087351.html

Canada’s Parliament has now passed the euthanasia law known as Bill C-14.

From the first day Bill C-14 was introduced in the House of Commons, members from all parties began the work of attempting to make this sow’s ear into a silk purse.

Even in the final days of deliberation, when the bill bounced back and forth between the House and the Senate, a majority of members still held on to the hope that they could get the job done for Canadians and turn this ‘bad’ bill into ‘good’ law.

One last ditch attempt to clean up the mess introduced in Bill C-14 by the Liberal government was the proposal of a protective amendment that would prohibit a beneficiary from participating in a person’s assisted death, or, signing the person’s request for assisted death.

This was a proposal that protected people from a greedy beneficiary or an unscrupulous family member.

But wait, why try to make this bad bill better? Turns out, this protective amendment didn’t ‘fit the bill’ so it was passed without it — by a majority of Parliament. And, why should Parliament at this point, even try to make the legislation better?  Especially when the sweet smell of summer is calling back home and the steaks are sizzling away on the barbeque.