Canada’s courts and government disagree on assisted dying as deadline looms

Two weeks before a court imposed deadline for Canada to pass assisted dying legislation, a ruling by Alberta’s Court of Appeal has said that the government’s proposed bill still falls short of offering the full right to die that the country’s Supreme Court said last year was constitutionally guaranteed.

Canada’s longstanding criminal ban on physician assisted death was struck down by the Supreme Court in the Carter versus Canada ruling which held that patients need not be at the end of life or have a terminal prognosis to qualify for assistance in dying, but must only have a “grievous and irremediable” …