A panel of three appeal court judges says the government is flouting last year's landmark ruling by the Supreme Court when it argues that assisted dying should apply only to those who are close to death.

OTTAWA — The federal government's rationale for a restrictive approach to medically assisted dying has been shot down in flames by the Alberta Court of Appeal, even before its controversial legislation is put to a vote in the House of Commons.

Justice Minister Jody Wilson-Raybould responds to a question about assisted dying legislation tabled by the government Thursday April 14, 2016 in Ottawa. (Photo: Adrian Wyld/CP)

It's also not complying with the top court's ruling, known as the Carter decision, when it excludes people suffering solely from psychiatric conditions, the judges say.

The judicial smack-down comes at a particularly inopportune moment for the federal government, just as it is trying to persuade MPs and senators that its restrictive new law on assisted dying complies with the Supreme Court's ruling and with the charter of rights.

The bill is expected to be put to final vote in the House of Commons, where MPs are being allowed a free vote, by the end of this week.

Alberta woman seeks judicial exemption

The judicial spanking came in a ruling Tuesday on the case of an Alberta woman, known only as E.F., who applied last month for a judicial exemption to the ban on medical assistance in dying.

Such exemptions were allowed by the top court in January when it gave the federal government an extra four months — until June 6 — to come up with a new law that recognizes the right to an assisted death for clearly consenting adults with "grievous and irremediable" medical conditions who are enduring suffering that they find intolerable.

E.F. is a 58-year-old woman who endures chronic and intolerable suffering due to a psychiatric condition known as "severe conversion disorder." She suffers from involuntary muscle spasms that cause her severe and constant pain and migraines.

According to the appeal court summary of her case, E.F.'s eyelids have spasmed shut, rendering her effectively blind, her digestive system is ineffective and she goes without eating for up to two days at a time. She can no longer walk and is confined to a wheelchair; her "quality of life is non-existent."

Liberal bill applies to those nearing end of life

E.F. attested that she is not depressed or suicidal but "simply exhausted after years of suffering indescribable pain." Her doctor and three other physicians, including a psychiatrist with expertise in the condition, attested that E.F. is fully competent and that there is no remedy for her condition, from which she has suffered for nine years.

An Alberta Court of Queen's Bench judge granted E.F. an exemption on May 5. However, the federal government appealed the decision, as did the government of British Columbia, where E.F. had arranged for a doctor to help her die.

The federal government contended that when the Supreme Court struck down the ban on medically assisted death as a violation of a person' charter right to life, liberty and security of the person, it did so only for persons near the end of life and precluded those suffering strictly from psychiatric conditions.

"The decision itself is clear. No words in it suggest otherwise. If the court had wanted it to be thus, they would have said so clearly and unequivocally. They did not."

In making its case, the government used the same rationale it has given for its proposed new law, which would make assisted death available only for clearly consenting adults "in an advanced stage of irreversible decline” from a serious and incurable disease, illness or disability and for whom a natural death is “reasonably foreseeable.”

According to the appeal court's summary of the federal argument, the government acknowledged that the Supreme Court did not expressly limit its ruling to those with terminal illnesses or expressly preclude those with psychiatric conditions.

Nevertheless, the government pointed to other parts of the top court ruling which specified that it was intended to respond to the factual circumstances of the case of Gloria Taylor — one of the plaintiffs, who was suffering from amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, a terminal illness — and was to apply to people like her.

It also argued that the top court compared medical assistance in dying to forms of "end of life" care that are available only to the terminally ill.