Daily Archives: April 21, 2016

climate science, Politics, Preventing Ecocide, solutions, Sustainability

Catherine McKenna praises Alberta, says Leap Manifesto ‘not helpful’

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Environment minister calls Alberta’s efforts on climate change ‘courageous’

McKenna says she hasn’t looked ‘closely’ at the Leap Manifesto 0:35

By Margo McDiarmid, reposted from CBCNews, Apr 21, 2016

Environment Minister Catherine McKenna says the Leap Manifesto that so divided the NDP at its Edmonton convention is not “helpful” in the current fractious national debate over economy and the environment.

“I know it was quite divisive within the NDP,” McKenna told CBC News in an exclusive interview. “We do believe that the environment and the economy go together, and taking hard-line positions on one side or another is not helpful,” she added.

Fronted by author Naomi Klein and her husband, filmmaker Avi Lewis, the Leap Manifesto is a short, if controversial, list of political proposals on topics ranging from the environment to infrastructure.

When Klein and Lewis introduced it during last year’s federal election campaign, it gained the backing of some prominent Canadians, including Leonard Cohen, David Suzuki and Rachel McAdams.

‘We are very proud of the government of Alberta. I think they have shown real leadership.’–Environment Minister Catherine McKenna

At its recent convention in Edmonton, the federal NDP agreed to take the next two years to study the document that calls for a ban on construction of new pipelines and a move away from all fossil fuels by 2050.

The decision to study the manifesto drew scathing criticism from Alberta’s NDP Premier Rachel Notley, who called the sections of the document that deal with energy infrastructure naive, ill-informed and tone deaf.

Defending Alberta

In her interview, McKenna jumped to Alberta’s defence, calling the province “courageous” for its work on the environment and efforts to reduce the carbon footprint of its beleaguered oilsands industry.

“We are very proud of the government of Alberta. I think they have shown real leadership,” she said.

She said she hasn’t read the LEAP manifesto very closely, adding, “We are working with the government of Alberta. It’s a very challenging economic situation there. I don’t think saying that we’re going to ignore that is helpful. What we have always said is that we need to develop our resources, but it has to be in a more sustainable way.”

McKenna discusses the divisive Leap Manifesto0:24

Historically the federal Liberals have had a testy relationship with Alberta, but now they’ve become allies on climate change. Notley and the federal government are working together to craft a national climate strategy along with the other provinces and territories over the next six months.

Alberta is Canada’s largest producer of greenhouse gases. Last November it introduced a plan to put a price on carbon and to cap emissions from the oilsands as a way to curb to greenhouse gases.

Seeing the agenda through

McKenna and Prime Minister Justin Trudeau will sign the UN Paris climate agreement in New York Friday, committing Canada to reducing its emissions 30 per cent below 2005 levels by 2030.

The minister said she is determined to finalize the national blueprint on how Canada will actually live up to its promise before the federal government ratifies the international agreement.

“We’re ratifying this fall and we will have a plan this fall, and I am personally committed to that. It’s what the premiers and PM agreed to when they had their meeting in Vancouver,” she said. “We need to have a plan to meet our international obligations and we have six months to do that.”

McKenna said she has very personal reasons to make it happen — her three children.

“This is about their future. It really is. It’s also about: Are we going to make this an opportunity for us to be leaders in the world or are we going to be laggards again? I’m not going to be a laggard and I’m not going to let down my kids.”

Read The Leap Manifesto

Download (PDF, 124KB)

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Activism, climate science, conservation, Politics, Preventing Ecocide, solutions, Sustainability

LINGO: Leave It in the Ground Initiative

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Above: COP21 Leave it in the ground Source 350.org FLICKR

Reposted from LINGO, on Apr 21, 2016

“Leave fossil fuels in the ground and learn to live without them” is a simple principle that can guide us out of the current maze where we keep making the climate crisis worse and worse.

If you want to solve a problem, you should go to its root. With climate change, the root of the problem is the burning of fossil fuels. There are some other contributors to global warming, but the key is that we dig and pump up oil, gas and coal and burn it. This has become so widespread practice in the last decades, that for most people it is difficult to imagine that one could live in a different way, because we were born and raised in the fossil age. But this fossil age has to come to an end as quickly as possible, in order to avoid the worst impacts of climate change. With our climate targets, namely 2°C or even 1.5°C maximum warming, there is no leeway for continuing the fossil society.

Complete decarbonization has to be swiftly accomplished over the next two-three decades. And it sure can be!

Even conventional reserves are so plentyful that we will pass critical thresholds if we extract all of them. On top of that, the fossil frontier is currently pushed further and further in the form of extreme extraction such as fracking, tar sands, Arctic drilling, etc. If we allow this, even more people will get “carbo-addicted” (mainly by constructing infrastructure that relies on fossil energy, not a physical addiction). This is crazy and must be stopped. We already know better. Zero carbon lifestyles have not only been the standard for most of human history, they are also fully in our reach with a dedicated effort to transforming our cities and lifestyles. This is a common task to our generation.

Good living with zero fossils is definitely possible and transitioning is urgent.As the inspiring examples from Samoa to Oakland, from Ethiopia to Australia show, our generation is slowly but surely waking up to this task. It is already happening in many places.

Let’s leave the fossils in the ground! SOURCE

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biodiversity, climate science, Ecocide, Ecocide ALert, Video

‘And then we wept’: Scientists say 93 percent of the Great Barrier Reef now bleached

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Footage taken at Australia’s Great Barrier Reef shows what authorities are calling the worst coral bleaching in 15 years. (Reuters)

By Chris Mooney, reposted from the Washington Post, Apr 20, 2016

The conclusions are in from a series of scientific surveys of the Great Barrier Reef bleaching event — an environmental assault on the largest coral ecosystem on Earth — and scientists aren’t holding back about how devastating they find them.

Australia’s National Coral Bleaching Task Force has surveyed 911 coral reefs by air, and found at least some bleaching on 93 percent of them. The amount of damage varies from severe to light, but the bleaching was the worst in the reef’s remote northern sector — where virtually no reefs escaped it.

“Between 60 and 100 percent of corals are severely bleached on 316 reefs, nearly all in the northern half of the Reef,” Prof. Terry Hughes, head of the ARC Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies at James Cook University, said in a statement to the news media. He led the research.

[How the Earth itself has upped the stakes for the Paris climate accord]

Severe bleaching means that corals could die, depending on how long they are subject to these conditions. The scientists also reported that based on diving surveys of the northern reef, they already are seeing nearly 50 percent coral death.

“The fact that the most severely affected regions are those that are remote and hence otherwise in good shape, means that a lot of prime reef is being devastated,” said Nancy Knowlton, Sant Chair for Marine Science at the Smithsonian Institution, in an email in response to the bleaching announcement. “One has to hope that these protected reefs are more resilient and better able to [recover], but it will be a lengthy process even so.”

Knowlton added that Hughes, who led the research, is “NOT an alarmist.”

Here’s a map that the group released when announcing the results, showing clearly that bleaching hit the northern parts of the reef the worst:



A map of the Great Barrier Reef shows the results of aerial surveys for 911 reefs. (Tom Bridge and James Kerry/ARC Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies)

Hughes tweeted the map above, writing, “I showed the results of aerial surveys of on the to my students, And then we wept.”

“This is, by far, the worst bleaching they’ve seen on the Great Barrier Reef,” said Mark Eakin, head of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Coral Reef Watch, which partners with the Australian National Coral Bleaching Taskforce. “Our climate model-based Four Month Bleaching Outlook was predicting that severe bleaching was likely for the [Great Barrier Reef] back in December. Unfortunately, we were right and much of the reef has bleached, especially in the north.”

Responding to the news Wednesday, the Australian government’s Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority put out a statement from its chairman Russell Reichelt. “While the data is incomplete, it is clear there will be an impact on coral abundance because of bleaching-induced mortality, mainly in the far north,” the statement said in part.

Coral bleaching occurs when corals are stressed by unusually high water temperatures, or from other causes. When this happens, symbiotic algae, called zooxanthellae, leave the corals’ bodies. This changes their color to white and can also in effect starve them of nutrients. If bleaching continues for too long, corals die.

There already have been reports of mass coral death around the Pacific atoll of Kiribati this year — and widespread coral bleaching worldwide, a phenomenon that scientists attribute to a strong El Niño event surfing atop a general climate warming trend.

Tourism involving the Great Barrier Reef is worth $5 billion annually, and accounts for close to 70,000 jobs, according to the news release from the Australian National Coral Bleaching Taskforce.

Recently, journalist Chelsea Harvey reported that some scientists think coral bleaching this extensive could be a sign of “dangerous” climate change caused by humans.

[Why dead coral reefs could mark the beginning of ‘dangerous’ climate change]

The 1992 United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, just after saying that countries should avoid such dangerous interference with the climate, adds that atmospheric greenhouse gas levels should be stabilized “within a time frame sufficient to allow ecosystems to adapt naturally to climate change.”

Indeed, recent research suggests that Great Barrier Reef corals have a mechanism to protect them if waters warm up beyond normal, but then cool down again before a second warming that crosses the bleaching threshold. However, as oceans continue to warm, it found, that pattern will be less prevalent, meaning that corals will be less able to cope.

Past global coral bleaching events have occurred in 1998 and 2010. In 1998, scientists ultimately documented through much follow-up research that 16 percent of the world’s corals died in that event. The full toll of the current global bleaching event has not yet been determined. SOURCE

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Scientists resort to advertising to get Great Barrier Reef crisis in Queensland paper

democracy, Politics, racism

‘Non-Status’ Indians in the U.S.? Part 1: A Lesson From the Canadian Supreme Court in Daniels v. Canada.

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By Harold Monteau, reposted from Indian Country, Apr 21, 2016

The recent Supreme Court of Canada decision in Daniels v. Canada(Indian Affairs and Northern Development), 2016 SCC 12, the Court was asked to resolve the question of whether “Metis” (Mixed Bloods) and “Non-Status Indians” were Indians under the Constitution and Laws of Canada. The Canadian Supreme Court found that, indeed, both were “Indians” for purposes of the Canadian Constitution and Law(s) and thus entitled to the same benefits though Canadian Law as “Status Indians”.

“Status Indians” or,“Registered Indians”, have rights and benefits that are not granted to unregistered Indians, which include the granting of reserves (Reservations) and of rights associated with them, an extended hunting season, a less restricted right to bear arms, an exemption from federal and provincial taxes, and more freedom in the management of gambling and tobacco sales.

“Non-status Indian” is a legal term referring to any First Nations individual who for whatever reason is not registered with the federal government, or is not registered to a band which signed a treaty. It was possible under Canadian Law for a “Status Indian” to become a “non-Status Indian” under certain circumstances that had previously been codified by Canadian Law at a time when Canadian Indian Law was influenced by policies seeking to “assimilate” Indians and even “terminate” the Canadian Federal fiduciary relationship with Tribes and individual Indians. For several decades, status Indian women automatically became non-status if they married men who were not status Indians. Prior to 1955, a status Indian could lose their status and become non-status through “enfranchisement” (voluntarily giving up status, usually for a minimal cash payment and the right to vote), or by obtaining a college degree or becoming an ordained minister. For several reasons there were policy changes in Canadian Law regarding Indians which took a more enlightened and humanistic approach to maintaining Indian Identity and Community. These changes and the resulting inconsistencies in the treatment of Indians under Canadian Law led to several court cases and Federal Acts calling for a more consistent and humane approach.

“Metis” are mixed Indian and Non-Indian, some affiliated with an Indian Community or Reserve and some not. Metis had historically been treated as Indians and looked upon as Indians to one degree or the other. Again, the Constitutional changes, court interpretations and statutory changes had worked over time to create a patchwork of law that sometimes recognized the Metis as Indians and sometimes did not. One circumstance contributing to the inconsistencies was the “diffusion” of the Metis across the whole of Canada sometimes in recognized “Indian or Metis Communities” and sometimes not.

The question I pose in this series is: Whether the United States Constitution and Laws do, or could, recognize non-federally recognized tribes and their members, state recognized tribes and their members, and individual Indian “Descendents” from “historic” tribes, and other indigenous people in the United States, as having a “trust/fiduciary relationship” with the United States under a similar analysis as the one used by the Supreme Court of Canada?

This is not meant to be a “Law Review” Article and I shall leave that to some enterprising Law Student to research and write. However, the answer to the posed question could have myriad effect on the individual Indians in the united states who are not members of “Federally Recognized Tribes”, or were “derecognized” or “terminated” or “disenrolled from Federally Recognized Tribes”, or are members of “State Recognized Tribes”, or Indians that can show descendantcy from a historic tribe or tribes but don’t meet “enrollment” criteria in any Tribe, or are descendants from other Indigenous People in the United States and its territories, such as Hawaii and Puerto Rico. Alaska Natives at one time were treated as an afterthought by the United States and the Department of Interior and the Bureau of Indian Affairs did not consistently act towards them as they did Federally Recognized Tribes with regard to federal benefits or treatment as governments. Some were recognized to have governmental status and some were not. Of course, with the realization of the vast mineral wealth and other valuable natural resources, the U.S. Government needed a way to control and exploit that wealth and secure the resources. The Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act was born so the U.S. could maintain “dominion” over the land and resources and assume “jurisdiction” over the Indigenous population therein.

In a Nutshell (pun intended), are there a class of Native Americans similar to Canada’s “Status Indians” and/or a class of “Indigenous Native Americans”, similar to Canada’s “Non-Status Indians”, to whom the U.S. may owe a fiduciary responsibility which it is now shirking? Could the U.S. take a lesson from Canada in resolving outstanding issues with regard to Native Hawaiian Recognition as Native Americans with attributes of sovereignty, including governmental rights over their people and lands? Could the same reasoning apply to other Indigenous populations in the American “Territories” that are in a state of limbo due to the inconsistencies in Federal Law as it applies to American Indigenous Populations? And, last but perhaps most importantly, does International Law and the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples militate for the United States to answer these question in the positive? Many people to not know or understand that the United States ratified the Geneva Conventions Against Genocide and placed “some” of the provisions into U.S. Statutory Law and those expressions of law lend support for certain “positive” treatment of Native Americans and other Indigenous populations in America, and militate against “negative” treatment that may violate the provisions of International Law and the provisions in the U.S. Code. Perhaps most importantly, do they provide a “check” on the supposed “Plenary Power” of Congress over Native American Affairs?

In the next installment we will examine the Canadian Supreme Court Opinion in Daniels V. Canada in more detail and look at some parallels with regard to U.S. Federal Law and Court Decisions. SOURCE

Politics

On Saudi arms deal, the new boss in Ottawa is just like the old boss

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Liberal Foreign Affairs Minister Stéphane Dion's memo green-lighting the bulk of the Saudi arms deal could have been written by former Conservative prime minister Stephen Harper, Neil Macdonald writes.
Liberal Foreign Affairs Minister Stéphane Dion’s memo green-lighting the bulk of the Saudi arms deal could have been written by former Conservative prime minister Stephen Harper, Neil Macdonald writes. (Canadian Press)

By Neil Macdonald, reposted from CBC News, Apr 14, 2016

Well. If further proof was needed that the sunny new regime in Ottawa is perfectly capable of behaving just like the un-sunny previous regime, we now have it, in amemo that was stamped “Secret,” then rather inconveniently laid bare in the Federal Court of Canada.

The document, signed by Foreign Affairs Minister Stéphane Dion, is a gem of hair-splitting, parsing, wilful blindness and justification for selling billions worth of fighting vehicles and weaponry to Saudi Arabia, one of the most oppressive regimes on Earth.

It employs the death-merchant logic of a long list of other countries that have profited for decades by arming despots: The deal means jobs and the customer assures us it won’t misuse the weapons and we can’t prove otherwise.

Besides, anti-tank weapons and heavy machine-guns don’t kill people; people kill people.

With a single checkmark, Dion concurred with everything in the memo.

Backers of global extremism

Among other things, Dion explicitly endorses Saudi Arabia’s ruinous military campaign in Yemen, the victims of which, according to the United Nations, are overwhelmingly civilian.

The Saudi-led campaign, Dion agrees, is an attempt to “counter instability” in Yemen and is “consistent with Canada’s defence interests in the Middle East.”

Graph 1
(CBC News Graphics)

Another view would be that Saudi Arabia’s fundamentalist Sunni regime is grimly determined to suppress, violently if need be, any demands for autonomy by Shia populations living on the Arabian peninsula.

When Shia demonstrations erupted in Bahrain during the so-called Arab Spring, Saudi Arabia sent armoured columns across the causeway linking it to the Sunni-ruled island, which proceeded to pitilessly crush the dissent, imprisoning and killing and torturing and demolishing Shia mosques.

The kingdom was also an eager and early bankroller of the Sunni rebels in Syria. That some of those groups were affiliated with al-Qaeda was irrelevant to Riyadh.

The Saudis, like ISIS, are fans of public beheadings, and for many years rich Saudis have financially supported extremists worldwide. It has been reported that a portion of the congressional report on the 9/11 attacks, still officially secret, concludes Saudi officials gave consular support and help to some of the hijackers, most of whom were… Saudi.

Women executed for ‘sorcery’

Then there is the little matter of how the Saudis treat their own citizens.

They have a hideous record of torture, oppression, arbitrary arrest and mistreatment of detainees, suppression of speech and religion, and institutional misogyny. They execute women for sorcery. Homosexuality is a grave crime.

This is a regime Canada wants to supply with arms and war-fighting vehicles?

As Gerald Butts, now the prime minister’s most senior adviser, tweeted when the Liberals were in opposition: “Principled foreign policy indeed.”

Once in government, though, moral outrage is a less affordable luxury.

While the Dion-approved memo acknowledges that the Saudi airstrikes have left Yemen strewn with dead civilians — to quote Human Rights Watch, “strikes against populated residential areas, hospitals, schools, markets and mosques may constitute war crimes” — it notes that there is no proof that any of the armoured fighting vehicles Canada has so far provided have been involved in such slaughter.

(That bit is crucial, because Canadian law forbids selling arms to regimes that are likely to use them against civilians).

It also carefully notes that “to the best of the department’s knowledge,” the Saudi troops sent into Bahrain were merely there to “protect key buildings and infrastructure, and had no part in suppression of peaceful protests.”

And in any event, says the memo with which Dion so fully concurs, the Saudis have stated “their respect for and compliance with the rules of international humanitarian and human rights laws.”

Ah. Well. Good to hear.

Oil, oil, oil

Perhaps more to the point, the memo also notes that the Saudis have the world’s largest oil reserves.

None of this is to suggest that Canada is any more hypocritical than other countries that shill vigorously for their arms manufacturers.

But the Dion memo could have just as easily been signed by Stephen Harper or one of his ministers.

Saudi Blogger Flogging 20150611
Ensaf Haidar, wife of blogger Raif Badawi, takes part in a rally for his freedom in Montreal in January. He been sentenced to a brutal flogging in Saudi Arabia for writing about Shia rights. (Ryan Remiorz/Canadian Press)

So far, the Liberal message has been that while it wouldn’t have negotiated the deal, it was stuck with it, and it is a legal contract and therefore must be honoured.

But Dion could have checked any one of three boxes when presented with the memo by department staff: “I concur,” “I don’t concur” or “I wish to discuss.”

You’d think, if this was a deal he truly thought should never have been negotiated, and was only signing because he had to, that he’d at least have wanted to discuss some of the more strained logic and reassurances in the memo. Or snip them.

But he didn’t. He concurred, completely.

Somehow different?

I wrote to Butts, now in the Prime Minister’s Office, asking him to square his tweet last year denouncing the Conservatives’ lack of principle with Dion’s wholehearted concurrence, which the Prime Minister’s Office had surely approved.

I promised I would print his response, so here it is:

“That tweet,” he replied, “is from a period when Jason Kenney and others were routinely posting vile (and often incorrect) photos and graphics about the Middle East conflict.”

(Butts later clarified that by “Middle East conflict” he meant ISIS.)

“I was pointing out the hypocrisy of their justification of their government’s Middle East campaign on the moral ground of human rights, while simultaneously pursuing deeper ties and expanded trade with a country that has a less than stellar record on that front.”

He continued: “At that time, Trudeau had already stated our party’s support for honouring a signed contract, so to suggest I had a different position then, as his principal adviser, is to misunderstand the context.”

And there it is.

This is different, somehow. SOURCE

Activism, democracy, Politics

CUPE heralds major court victory in Bill 115 charter challenge

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About 30 Saugeen District High School teachers and education workers, along with 100 or more Canadian Auto Workers take part in a noon time protest march in Port Elgin on Tuesday September 25, 2012 to demonstrate against the Ontario Government’s Bill 115 which takes away collective bargaining rights for teachers and education workers in Ontario. WILLY WATERTON/THE SUN TIMES

CUPE Media Release, reposted from MarketWired, Apr 20, 2016

TORONTO, ONTARIO-(Marketwired - April 20, 2016) - CUPE’s 55, 000 education workers are lauding a significant Ontario Superior Court victory, after several unions challenged the constitutionality of Bill 115. The court challenge was filed in 2013 after Bill 115 stripped workers in the education sector of their rights to bargain collectively. The challenge was postponed in 2014 at the request of the province, and resumed in December, 2015.

“CUPE’s position has always been that Bill 115 violated our basic Charter rights,” said Terri Preston, chair of the union’s education sector coordinating committee. “We saw it as a threat to all Canadian workers, and we couldn’t let it pass unchallenged. The court validated our position that this Bill was a gross overreach that trampled basic freedom-of-association rights.”

“After this lawsuit was initially filed, the Supreme Court of Canada (SCC) ruled in the Saskatchewan Federation of Labour case that workers have a constitutional right to strike,” said Fred Hahn, president of CUPE Ontario. “CUPE was a lead union on that SCC case, and victory there gave us great confidence in our case here. We are thrilled the Superior Court has agreed that the government’s approach to collective bargaining was ‘fundamentally flawed’.”

Significantly, in his ruling Justice Lederer wrote that the impact of this flawed piece of legislation was “not just on the economic circumstances of education workers but on their associational rights and the dignity, autonomy and equality that comes with the exercise of that fundamental freedom.”

“This couldn’t send a clearer message to governments that they ought not interfere in free collective bargaining,” said Preston. “It’s a terrific ruling for education workers in Ontario and in building on the existing case law, for all Canadian workers.”

Justice Lederer made no ruling on remedy, obliging the parties to meet to try and reach agreement. If agreement is not reached on remedy, the matter will be referred back to him. “We will meet with the other unions with whom we engaged in this court challenge to discuss what we want to see by way of remedy,” said Hahn. “We will continue to work together to preserve basic collective bargaining rights. We call on the Liberal government to accept this ruling and put any thought of a costly appeal out of their minds. Now they must spend time, energy and resources on remedy, and on strengthening the public education system in Ontario.”

The parties to the challenge, alongside CUPE, were the Elementary Teachers’ Federation of Ontario (ETFO), the Ontario Secondary School Teachers’ Federation (OSSTF), and the Ontario Public Service Employees’ Union (OPSEU). UNIFOR also had intervenor status.

CUPE represents 55, 000 education workers in Ontario, including custodians, administrative and clerical staff, educational assistants, instructors, tradespeople, early childhood educators, and many more, across all four school board systems (English and French, Catholic and public). SOURCE

democracy, Politics

Mulcair says new law on medical assistance in dying should be referred to Supreme Court

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The top court ruled against assisted dying last year and advocacy groups are concerned that patients will have to launch their own court challenges.

NDP Leader Tom Mulcair says that referring to the Supreme Court would be the easiest way to determine the legality of the new medical assistance in dying law passed by the federal government.
NDP Leader Tom Mulcair says that referring to the Supreme Court would be the easiest way to determine the legality of the new medical assistance in dying law passed by the federal government. ADRIAN WYLD / THE CANADIAN PRESS

By: Joan Bryden The Canadian Press, reposted from TheStar, Apr 20, 2016

OTTAWA — NDP Leader Thomas Mulcair is joining the chorus urging the federal government to refer its proposed new law on medical assistance in dying to the Supreme Court.

Mulcair says he’ll vote for the bill because he believes Parliament should meet the June 6 deadline set by the top court for enacting a new law.

But he says there are “shortcomings” in the restrictive approach the government is taking, raising legitimate questions as to whether it respects the top court’s ruling last year, which struck down the ban on assisted dying.

Mulcair says the simplest way to remove doubt is to refer the law to the Supreme Court to test whether it complies with the ruling and with the charter of rights.

A number of advocacy groups, as well as some MPs and senators, are also urging the government to seek the top court’s advice on the new law, rather than force sick or dying individuals to launch court challenges on their own.

Justice Minister Jody Wilson-Raybould has said it is “premature” to consider a court reference and Prime Minister Justin Trudeau does not seem inclined to seek the court’s advice on the matter.

“To remove all doubt for families, for medical practitioners and for parliamentarians, I think that the government should today say we will be referring this to the Supreme Court,” Mulcair said following an NDP caucus meeting Wednesday.

“We (would) get a rapid decision and everybody would have a much more solid footing.”

The Supreme Court ruled that medical help in dying should be available to clearly consenting adults with “grievous and irremediable” medical conditions who are enduring physical or mental suffering that they find intolerable.

The government has taken a more restrictive approach, allowing assisted death only for consenting adults, at least 18 years of age, who are 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.”

The proposed law does not extend the right to medically assisted dying to mature minors or to those who suffer only from mental illnesses. Nor does it allow people with competence-eroding conditions like dementia to make advance requests for an assisted death.

Trudeau acknowledged Tuesday that the bill dodges some of the more difficult issues, but he said legalizing medically assisted dying is a huge change for Canada and needs to be done slowly, one step at a time.

Issues such as mature minors and advance directives will eventually be dealt with, hopefully by Parliament rather than the courts, he added.

“I hope we don’t have to wait on the Supreme Court to make these decisions,” Trudeau said during a question-and-answer session with University of Ottawa students.

“I hope we as Canadians and as parliamentarians are able to have these difficult but reasonable discussions on making sure that we’re doing right by everyone’s rights while we protect the most vulnerable.”

Conservative MP Andrew Scheer said his party wants to strengthen provisions in the bill to protect the conscience rights of doctors and nurses who do not want to participate in helping patients die.

Nothing in the bill compels medical practitioners to take part but nor does it specifically affirm their right to refuse. How precisely that will work without limiting access to medical help in dying is left to the provinces, which are responsible for delivering health care, to figure out.

SOURCE

RESOURCE:

Assisted death bill could land feds incourt all over again