MAID legislation: BC Civil Liberties Association calls for review [Video]

The British Columbia Civil Liberties Association is calling on the provincial and federal governments to review medically-assisted dying legislation to ensure proper safeguards are in place.

The association’s executive director Liza Hughes says in a statement that it’s aware of “concerning reports” of people being offered MAID in circumstances that may not legally qualify or are a result of intolerable social circumstances.

That statement comes after the family of a 52-year-old man who received MAID while on a day pass from a Vancouver psychiatric hospital launched a constitutional challenge last week to the procedure’s legal framework.

That lawsuit follows another case about two months ago in which a B.C. judge halted an Alberta woman’s medically assisted death, the day before she was scheduled to receive the procedure in Vancouver.

The BCCLA was on the forefront of the fight to decriminalize medical assistance in dying almost a decade ago.

Hughes says …