Former Québec Premier Philippe Couillard, who oversaw the legalisation of euthanasia in the province in 2014, has admitted he is no longer sure he would support the legislation, given how far the practice has expanded.
Speaking on CBC Radio’s The House, Couillard expressed serious reservations about the direction euthanasia has taken since Québec became the first Canadian province to legalise it.
As reported by Darren Major for CBC News in recent days, Couillard said the original legislation was intended to apply only to people nearing the end of life.
“It was clearly reserved for terminal or pre-terminal conditions with a defined, unfortunate road to the end of life. And this is not the case anymore,” he told host Catherine Cullen.
“I’m not sure that I would have again voted for that law with the extension that we have seen in the recent years.”
Couillard, a former neurosurgeon, also acknowledged that opponents of the original legislation had warned him that legalising euthanasia would inevitably lead to its expansion.
“I was warned about this by people opposing the law that told me, ‘We see your motivation is good, but you will see, once you open the door you will not close it and it will open wider.’ And this is what happened,” he said.
Alex Schadenberg, Executive Director of Canada’s Euthanasia Prevention Coalition, said he met Couillard in 2014 and warned him that euthanasia laws in countries such as the Netherlands had steadily expanded beyond their original scope.
Schadenberg said he specifically cautioned Couillard that the wording of Québec’s proposed legislation would lead to similar expansion.
More than a decade later, Couillard’s public acknowledgement that those warnings proved accurate has renewed attention on the long-term consequences of legalising euthanasia and the difficulty of maintaining the safeguards originally promised.