Canada seen by some as cautionary tale for U.K.'s assisted dying bill

Esther Rantzen says she doesn't have the strength to fly to Canada to seek lasting relief from her ever-advancing cancer, but she would if she could.

"I love Canada, but I think I will go to Switzerland and seek an assisted death if the illness starts to progress faster," Rantzen, 84, said from her cottage in the New Forest in southern England. 

"It was named the New Forest a thousand years ago by one of William the Conqueror's sons. So we are quite a conservative country…. If we regard a thousand years as being quite new, you can see why it's taking us a bit of time to reform our current law."

Rantzen is referring to what's being called a once-in-a-generation political and moral decision for the United Kingdom's members of Parliament.

On Friday, MPs will have the opportunity to debate and vote on whether terminally ill adults in England and Wales with fewer than six months to live and the assistance of a doctor should have the right to end their lives. 

Bill 12, or the Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill, says anyone who wants to end their life must be older than 18, have the mental capacity to make that choice and be expected to die within six months. From there, interested adults must make two separate declarations, witnessed and signed, about their wish to die and receive approval from two independent doctors.

A High Court judge would then hear from at least one of the doctors and be permitted to question the dying person before making their ruling, at which point a doctor would prepare a substance for the individual, who would administer it themselves. 

Currently, assisted suicide, as it's called in the U.K., is illegal and punishable by up to 14 years in prison.

Despite Bill 12 being modelled extensively after assisted dying laws in the state of Oregon in the U.S., Canada has found itself being held up as a prime example of what not to do by those who oppose the legislation. 

Some people see Canada's expanding provisions for medical assistance in dying (MAID) as an example of what they feel could go wrong if the legislation is passed. Others are saying the strictness of the language in the British bill will safeguard England and Wales against going the way of Canada's experience.

"We've got the benefit in this country of looking at what other countries have done," Labour MP Kim Leadbeater told ITV's Good Morning Britain. 

"And I'm not looking at the model that is going on in Canada. I'm looking at those other jurisdictions where this is done well and in some cases it's been done for a long time, very well, and the criteria have never been extended."

MAID was legalized across Canada in 2016 for those whose death was "reasonably foreseeable."

Expanded in 2021, the law as Canadians know it today no longer requires the person applying to have a terminal diagnosis in order to be eligible.