Careening Off of the Slippery Slope

What did everyone think would happen when euthanasia was legalised?

That it would never go off of the proverbial rails?

Too late:

We have all learned to live with judges shredding statutes in a moment of dyspepsia, and, indeed, the original Criminal Code ban on assisting in suicide was overthrown in such a spirit. But doctors and nurses are, in today’s Canada, a higher species whose powerful force field repels any thought of judicial review. WV is confined to saving his daughter through strictly procedural arguments a month from now in the Alberta Court of Appeal: he has to somehow show that AHS didn’t follow its own written policies properly, and Justice Feasby does think he has a case worth hearing.

But various appellate courts seem to have created for Canadians a warped kind of mathematical equation here, a chain of principles no one person ever explicitly sought to weld together. Personal autonomy is paramount, for those entitled to exercise it; people who have decision-making capacity have the right to end their lives if they meet certain diagnostic conditions; since the purpose of governments is to facilitate the exercise of autonomy, doctors (and nurse practitioners!) must be allowed to practice euthanasia, even if this conflicts with their professional traditions; the law has no right to intervene in or even demand information about any medical diagnosis.

(Sidebar: what is this personal autonomy one speaks of? Does it exist in Canada? Could people keep their jobs if they didn't get this ridiculous Covid jab, for example?

Splice these noble propositions together, and you don’t quite get to a science-fiction suicide-booths-on-every-streetcorner scenario. It’s merely a pretty close approximation. (And let’s face it: if suicide booths were a popular idea — polls do indicate that Canadians are remarkably tolerant of euthanasia — Canada would never get around to procuring and installing ones that worked.)