MONTREAL—In the midst of an election launch a Quebec court has thrown the issue of medically assisted death back in the political arena.

On Wednesday, Quebec’s Superior Court justice Christine Baudouin struck down key sections of both the federal and Quebec laws.

In an extensive ruling, she found the restriction that limits assisted dying to terminally ill patients to be unconstitutional.

As of now, Justin Trudeau has less than 30 days to decide whether to commit the next federal government to rewrite the law within its first months in power or to appeal the ruling.

He may want to think twice before taking the apparent path of least resistance of trying to punt the debate out of the ongoing campaign by taking the fight to the next judicial level.

If mishandled, this is an issue that has the potential to turn into electoral kryptonite for the Liberals, especially in Quebec.

Their party’s ground war gives pride to the notion that his main opponent, Conservative Leader Andrew Scheer, cannot be trusted with Canadians’ fundamental freedoms. By the looks of it, an entire section of the party’s war room is dedicated to sustaining that narrative.

But in the one major instance when Trudeau, as prime minister, was called upon to align federal legislation with the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, the Superior Court found he fell well short of the task.

This week’s ruling can’t have come as a surprise to the Liberals.

At the time of the adoption of the medically-assisted-death law in 2016, the majority in the Senate, along with current Attorney General David Lametti, who was not then not in cabinet, had all argued it was too restrictive to sustain a Charter test.

Many legal experts believed it was only a matter of time before a court validated that contention.

The Liberals plan back then may have been to wait for a judge to force their hand and expand the scope of their legislation.

For all the talk about being at the leading edge of social rights, the Liberals along with much of Canada’s political class had to be dragged to the altar of abortion rights, same-sex marriage and assisted suicide by the courts.

What the outgoing government did not necessarily foresee was that a judge would propel Trudeau to a crossing of the road on assisted dying in the early days of his re-election campaign.

It would be risky on the part of Liberal strategists to assume the issue will get lost in the shuffle of the campaign. Or that they can sell an appeal on Trudeau’s vague commitment to review the legislation at some unspecified point down the road.

Baudouin’s ruling is too tightly argued to be casually dismissed and the two protagonists who have successfully fought this legal round are too articulate.

Earlier this week La Presse’s Yves Boisvert — a veteran columnist who has covered more than his share of heartbreaking justice stories — wrote that Baudouin’s reasons to strike down crucial sections of the two laws brought tears to his eyes.

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In the days since the ruling, Jean Truchon and Nicole Gladu — the Quebecers who brought their battle for the right to end the suffering they endure as a result of incurable degenerative illnesses to the courts — have likely won more voters’ hearts and minds than any federal leader.

Back in 2016, Trudeau’s government ignored calls to ask the Supreme Court to pronounce on the constitutionality of its legislation.

It opted to leave people struggling with debilitating illnesses to fend for themselves in the court system. The human faces associated with this week’s victory do not reflect well on the outgoing prime minister.

Sen. Serge Joyal — who fought for a less restrictive federal approach to assisted dying three years ago — believes Trudeau’s best exit strategy would now be to belatedly refer the issue to the Supreme Court for guidance.

That would relieve Truchon, Gladu and others like them of the onus of leading more financially and physically exhausting rounds in the lower courts.

It might also spare Trudeau a critical hit on his credibility.

He has over the first days of the campaign insisted on keeping the door open to having a Liberal government eventually join the court battles against Quebec’s contentious secularism law.

More than a few voters could have a hard time reconciling Trudeau’s fighting words on behalf of religious minorities with a decision to challenge a robust court finding that his assisted death legislation infringes on some no-less-fundamental rights.

By the time the second French-language election debate comes around, on Oct. 10, Trudeau will have had to have made a determination as to the way forward on assisted dying.

It is difficult to think of a move that would do more to validate the Conservative contention that Trudeau is “not as advertised” than a midcampaign decision to continue to fight every inch of the legal way the long-suffering Canadians whose right to what they see as a death with dignity was affirmed in court this week.

Chantal Hébert is a columnist based in Ottawa covering politics. Follow her on Twitter: @ChantalHbert

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