Professor Emmett Macfarlane is a professor in the Department of Political Science at Waterloo. (Available for print and radio only)
"After decades of intransigence by Parliament on the issue, today the Court has paved the way for the clear, emphatic protection of fundamental individual liberty in its decision on assisted suicide. The decision is in the spirit of the best aspects of the Court's role: an unequivocal statement of principle, clarity for government action at the federal and provincial levels, while leaving room for political actors to determine what future regulation will look like and how to address key questions surrounding new policy."
Professor Jay Dolmage is a professor in the Department of English Language and Literature at Waterloo, and the editor of the Canadian Journal of Disability Studies.
"The federal government has long maintained that a ban on doctor-assisted suicide was important because it asserted and protected the value of the lives of people with disabilities. In the midst of all of the coverage of the overturning on the ban today, it is important to recognize the ways that these lives are already devalued and placed at risk. People with disabilities are already twice as likely to be victims of violence and abuse, often at the hands of caregivers and medical professionals. People with disabilities are already commonly forcibly drugged or subject to unwanted medical intervention, and often isolated. When disability intersects with poverty, linguistic and cultural difference, or minority status, as it very often does in Canada, these people become even more vulnerable."
