On the need to restart the debate on assisted suicide

By Ken MacQueen - Wednesday, August 17, 2011 - 4 Comments

Lee Carter and Hollis Johnson discuss death and chocolate in a Swiss clinic

On death and chocolate in a Swiss clinic, and the need to restart the debate on assisted suicide

Photographs by Simon Hayter

On Jab. 15, 2010, Kathleen (Kay) Carter of North Vancouver had a date with death, an event she’d been seeking for months. She was 89 years old and nearly paralyzed by spinal stenosis. She made a last journey to Dignitas, a Swiss clinic devoted to assisted dying, accompanied by her daughter Lee Carter, Lee’s husband, Hollis Johnson, and other family. There, she drank a lethal drug, nibbled on a Swiss chocolate and drifted off to death. Her legacy is a renewed debate on the right to die. Carter and Johnson are now part of a challenge to the law prohibiting assisted suicide. It will be heard in the B.C. Supreme Court in November.

Q: Lee, tell me about Kay Carter, your mother.

LC: She was a fiercely independent person. She was well-read. She was interested in politics, social issues. She went to university and spent one year teaching elementary school in White Rock, B.C. And then she started having children, and had seven. There was no room for a job. She was married to my dad, Ron Carter, until he died in his mid-60s.

Q: In 2008, she was diagnosed with spinal stenosis. What did it mean to her quality of life?

LC: Basically, it’s to do with the [degenerating] spinal cord. You begin to lose your extremities, the ability to use your hands, your feet and eventually your legs. When she was diagnosed, it was hard to use her arms. She knew something was wrong. She would have been around 86 or 87.
HJ: I think the prognosis was particularly horrifying for her. The doctor said at some point, “You’ll be completely paralyzed, and just be on a gurney, and all of your needs will have to be attended to by others.” For her to lose that mobility was really terrifying.

Q: At what point did she decide she wanted to end her life?

LC: She woke up in the middle of the night [in July 2009] and said, “I’ve got it. I know what I want to do. I want to go overseas. Over there they can allow me to die with dignity.”
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The high price of growing cucumbers

By Michael Barclay - Thursday, May 26, 2011 at 9:40 AM - 0 Comments

British Columbia:… The B.C. Civil Liberties Association has filed a class-action lawsuit against the

British Columbia: The B.C. Civil Liberties Association has filed a class-action lawsuit against the district of Mission over a bylaw that allowed homes using more than the average amount of electricity to be inspected for signs of a grow op. Residents who were growing cucumbers or had incorrect wiring—with no marijuana to be found—were nonetheless fined up to $5,300, and in one case had trouble entering the U.S. The bylaw has since been suspended pending review.

Alberta: A man is suing the Calgary police, claiming he was wrongfully beaten up and arrested for trying to pick up a prostitute. According to the plaintiff, he was simply the passenger in his friend’s van when the driver allegedly tried to buy sex from an undercover police officer. A police vehicle then approached the van, and the plaintiff says he was pulled out and punched and kicked by two officers before being questioned and searched.

Saskatchewan: Regina’s CTV News anchor Manfred Joehnck is suing the local alternative weekly, Prairie Dog, for a blog post he claims misinterpreted on-air remarks he made comparing k.d. lang’s physical appearance to Charlie Sheen: “The older she gets, the more she looks like Charlie Sheen,” Joehnck joked, before qualifying: “Charlie on a good day, not his web page days.” The blogger took umbrage to what he perceived as a slur against lang’s appearance, and by extension her sexual orientation. Although Joehnck has apologized, his lawsuit claims the post and the reader comments are harmful to his reputation.

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Who's suing whom?

By Michael Barclay - Wednesday, March 30, 2011 at 12:23 PM - 0 Comments

A compendium of lawsuits from across the country

British Columbia: A class-action lawsuit was launched against the B.C. government over allegedly improper Breathalyzer tests used after new drinking and driving legislation was introduced last fall. In November, 2,200 roadside Breathalyzers were recalled by the Victoria police chief amid concerns over mis-calibration and faulty readings. The lead plaintiff in the suit had his licence suspended and his car impounded after registering a blood-alcohol level of 0.05, the minimum level for an immediate suspension under the new law.

Saskatchewan: A 24-year-old woman, with the support of the B.C. Civil Liberties Association, is suing Correctional Services Canada, claiming that her four-year stint in solitary confinement is unconstitutional. The Civil Liberties Association says there are no limits or objective criteria for placing prisoners in solitary confinement for long terms. Parole Board documents say she has been repeatedly violent in prison.

Ontario: A cyclist who suffered a brain injury after a race held last April is suing the Hamilton Cycling Club for $20 million in damages. He was travelling 40 km/h when he slammed on the brakes to avoid a cluster of competitors on a sharp turn, causing him to be hurled over the handlebars; he spent 3½ months in hospital. In a race with 200 cyclists, his accident was one of a dozen that day. No statement of defence has been filed, although organizers say the route will be altered for next month’s race.

Nova Scotia: A Halifax gambler who voluntarily signed an agreement banning him from the premises of Casino Nova Scotia is suing the establishment for $61,000 for allegedly allowing him to return repeatedly, even more than once a day, with access to the “high-rollers” area and free alcohol. No defence has been filed by the company that owns the casino, Great Canadian Gaming Corporation, which is facing similar lawsuits in British Columbia.
Where the talk of torture could lead

By John Geddes - Sunday, November 29, 2009 at 1:30 PM - 16 Comments

Could Canadians actually be charged with war crimes?

Richard Colvin had barely ﬁnished delivering his incendiary testimony about torture in Afghanistan to a House committee last week before ﬁerce debate broke out. For politicians and the public, the issue was whether the diplomat is a courageous whistleblower or an unreliable rogue. But among international law experts, the argument is about the ultimate outcome if his allegations—about federal ofﬁcials ignoring clear warnings that detainees transferred by Canadian troops to Afghan authorities were being tortured—hold up. Is there a serious prospect of Canadian military or civilian officials being investigated and even charged as war criminals?

A few outspoken law professors quickly concluded that Colvin’s revelations formed a solid basis for a war crimes case. But others told Maclean’s that dramatic outcome is extremely unlikely. The experts are sparring over a relatively untested federal law. International law on war crimes went through a period of rapid reform in the 1990s, largely in the wake of atrocities committed in the violent breakup of the former Yugoslavia. Prompted by the creation of the International Criminal Court, Canada passed a new Crimes Against Humanity and War Crimes Act on Oct. 23, 2000. The ﬁrst person convicted under the act, Désiré Munyaneza, a Rwandan who led a band of murderers in that country’s 1994 genocide, was sentenced last month in a Montreal court to life in prison.

The possibility that the same law meant to bring the likes of Munyaneza to justice could be applied to Canadians involved in Afghan detainee transfers is sobering. Recognizing that even raising the possibility is controversial, some lawyers who have been hashing over the issue in private declined to be interviewed on the record. Yet several prominent academic experts said it could and should happen. “We must hope that the will to investigate and prosecute is present,” said Michael Byers, a University of British Columbia law professor and former federal NDP candidate in Vancouver. Continue…
The fine art of paramilitary euphemism

By Colby Cosh - Friday, November 27, 2009 at 1:17 PM - 2 Comments

The B.C. Civil Liberties Association is to be applauded for a marginal victory in the seemingly endless fight against homegrown Winter Olympics totalitarianism. But make no mistake: it is a very marginal win, at best. The Vancouver police purchased the American Technology Corp.’s LRAD-500X acoustic beam generator, supposedly for use as a loudhailer at public gatherings and protests. Both the police and American Technology object to media references to the device as a “sound gun”, a “sonic cannon”, or a non-lethal weapon. But it has been used that way in the field, and the VPD has effectively conceded the point by agreeing, under BCCLA pressure, to disable a device setting that allows the LRAD to generate “powerful deterrent tones… to influence behaviour.”

That quoted description, mind you, doesn’t come from critics of the device: it comes from the vendor’s own data sheet. In other words, the LRAD’s ability to cause pain and temporary deafness is a selling point. Devices in this class were developed after the attack on the USS Cole, which should really settle the question whether their essential purpose is to communicate with crowds or to cause intolerable agony to human targets. American Technology offers an attached “laser dazzler” as an option with the LRAD, and the data sheet specifies that it “enhances public safety measures without exposing nearby personnel or peripheral bystanders to excessive audio levels,” suggesting that the whole idea is to expose only the people you’re aiming at to excessive audio levels.

And the LRAD’s staggering acoustic power can surely still be used to inflict pain even with the automatic “deterrent tones” feature switched off. Indeed, you could just plug in an MP3 player (a ruggedized media player is another one of those fancy options buyers can splash out on) and play high-pitched, piercing tweets through the speaker that way. If you’ve got an Olympics protest planned, don’t, do not, leave the earplugs at home.