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This article was published 26/5/2016 (1577 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

OTTAWA — The former Manitoba MP who once tried to legislate physician-assisted dying in Canada predicts Canada will never have a law governing the practice.

"There's not going to be any legislation in Canada," said Steven Fletcher, who is now the MLA for Assiniboia in Manitoba.

He predicted the government will never be able to get agreement in Parliament on a bill, leaving the role of overseeing the details of the process of obtaining an assisted death up to provincial governments and medical licensing bodies such as the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Manitoba.

The federal government is working to pass legislation to comply with a 2015 Supreme Court decision lifting the blanket ban on physician-assisted suicide for competent adults suffering from grievous and irremediable conditions. The court initially gave the government one year to pass its own legislation before the ruling took effect. That was extended four months, until June 6, to account for the delay of the federal election.

The government has been doing everything it can to shove the bill through all stages of debate as fast as possible but there is virtually no chance it will pass the Senate before June 6. Fletcher said regardless of whether the bill passes, it will end up back at the Supreme Court because it is not as broad as what the court ordered last year, particularly in limiting assisted death to those who are dying.

Fletcher said his private member's bills from 2014, which never passed, were similar to the tactic taken by the high court.

The Liberal bill is much narrower.

"It is blatantly denying a segment of the population their rights and you just can't do that," he said.

The college has a 10-page policy document outlining the requirements for physicians in Manitoba once the court decision takes effect on June 6. The requirements include that two independent physicians assess the patient, and that unless a patient is expected to die within seven days, that there be a seven-day waiting period after a request is made for help to die. Other regulations include that no doctor is compelled to provide an assisted death, nor are they even compelled to refer a patient to a doctor who will. They also cannot impose their beliefs on a patient, whether they are for or against assisted death.

Licensing bodies across the country have similar policies in place. Josh Paterson, executive director of the British Columbia Civil Liberties Association, said no legislation is better than the bill the Liberals are pushing, and said with the college safeguards and regulations, the legal vacuum the Liberals are fear-mongering about is nonsense.

"There will not be a legal void," said Paterson. "It will be regulated by the guidelines in place by every provincial medical college."

The BCCLA, which brought the case that led to the Supreme Court decision, has been heavily critical of Bill C14, saying one of the patients at the heart of the lawsuit wouldn't be eligible for an assisted death under the law because her condition while grievous and irremediable and causing her intolerable suffering, was not fatal.

The Supreme Court decision was broad enough to include someone like Kay Carter but Bill C14 is not.

The Alberta Court of Appeal already struck down the limit preventing an assisted death to someone suffering only from a psychiatric condition. That decision came after the government appealed the court's granting of an assisted death to a woman with a mental illness.

mia.rabson@freepress.mb.ca