Carter v Canada (Attorney General)

Gloria Taylor and the family of Kay Carter challenged the Criminal Code prohibition on assisting suicide. The SCC unanimously struck the prohibition down for competent adults with grievous and irremediable medical conditions causing enduring suffering.

Both women suffered from severe degenerative disease. The prohibition in s.241(b) of the Criminal Code prevented Canadian physicians from assisting them to end their lives, forcing patients to travel abroad or take their own lives prematurely.

Does the absolute prohibition on physician-assisted dying violate s.7 (life, liberty, security of person) of the Charter, and if so is it saved by s.1?

Yes — the prohibition violates s.7 and is not saved. The provisions are void insofar as they prohibit physician-assisted death for a competent adult who clearly consents to the termination of life and has a grievous and irremediable medical condition that causes enduring suffering intolerable to them.

A blanket criminal prohibition that engages liberty and security interests is not minimally impairing where a carefully designed and monitored system can address the state's objective. Stare decisis can be revisited where the legal framework or social facts have fundamentally shifted.

The Court reaffirmed that liberty engages personal autonomy over fundamental life choices, and security includes the right to make decisions about one's bodily integrity free from state interference. The prohibition was over-broad — it caught patients whose deaths were not foreseeable but who suffered intolerably. The Court revisited Rodriguez (1993), holding that the s.7 framework had evolved (Bedford), the law on overbreadth had developed, and the social and legislative facts had changed (Belgium, Netherlands, Oregon, Washington showed safeguards work).

Reversed Rodriguez. Led to federal legislation enacting Medical Assistance in Dying (MAID) in 2016 and its expansion in 2021. Demonstrates the SCC's willingness to revisit precedent when underlying social and legal facts evolve.

Carter v Canada (Attorney General), 2015 SCC 5, [2015] 1 SCR 331.

McLachlin CJ, LeBel J, Abella J, Rothstein J, Cromwell J, Moldaver J, Karakatsanis J, Wagner J, Gascon J