Failure to enact assisted suicide law leaves Canada’s doctors in limbo

Canada’s doctors, medical organisations, healthcare system, and patients have been left in legal limbo after the government missed the 6 June deadline to pass new laws legalising doctor assisted suicide.

The Supreme Court set the June deadline for the new proposed law, called Bill C-14, last February.1 2 The law has been passed in Canada’s House of Commons but remains under scrutiny and debate in the upper house, the Senate.

Since 7 June the criminal code prohibiting physician assisted dying has been lifted, but because federal legislation has not been enacted doctors, pharmacists, and nurses are unsure whether …