Will Canadian doctors grant assisted death without a new law?

Canadian doctors and nurses are going to find themselves in a “very difficult situation” come June 6 if the government doesn’t manage to pass new legislation on assisted dying, says the vice-president of the Canadian Medical Association.

Dr. Jeff Blackmer says his members are extremely concerned about the lack of clear direction that could occur if patients start asking for help to die before a law is in place.

The Supreme Court has ruled that as of June 6, medically assisted dying will no longer be illegal in Canada. Patients can ask for it, doctors and nurses can provide it.

But without a federal law in place, the only guidance available on the procedure would come from the Supreme Court decision itself. And it’s far from clear, Blackmer told the West Block’s Tom Clark.

“To start with, those parameters are vague in the extreme, and contain absolutely no clinical direction whatsoever,” he explained. “So they indicate that patients with a grievous and irremediable illness would qualify for assisted dying. Those are not medical terms. Doctors don’t know what we mean by those terms.”

Tweet This Click to share quote on Twitter: "To start with, those parameters are vague in the extreme, and contain absolutely no clinical direction whatsoever," he explained. "So they indicate that patients with a grievous and irremediable illness would qualify for assisted dying. Those are not medical terms. Doctors don't know what we mean by those terms."

WATCH: A West Block primer on the medically assisted death deadline 

0:40 The medically assisted death deadline

The Carter decision also contains no outline for the process that a doctor would follow in terms of determining whether or not someone would qualify, and there’s no reporting requirement. A medical professional could technically help end a patient’s life, then tell no one.

“So you can imagine for the average physician being faced with this type of a scenario, they will not want to participate because they will not feel at all comfortable in terms of the legal status of their activities or the extent to which they will be protected legally as well,” Blackmer said.

“I think there’s a real chill in the profession right now and a lot of anxiety about what would happen if there is no bill in place.”

Tweet This Click to share quote on Twitter: "I think there's a real chill in the profession right now and a lot of anxiety about what would happen if there is no bill in place."

READ MORE: What happens if there’s no new law on assisted death?

Even with a law in place, access to assisted death may be tricky. Only 29 per cent of doctors surveyed by the Canadian Medical Association said they were comfortable with helping someone die if that patient is terminally ill. For someone who isn’t terminal, the percentage of doctors willing to participate drops to 19 per cent.

“I anticipate that if we were talking about things like someone whose sole diagnosis is mental illness that would go down further,” Blackmer said.

“So the more additional layers of complexity, the less, physicians would participate … the number never drops to zero, so I think regardless of sort of the scenario, there will always be physicians who will step forward.”

Tweet This Click to share quote on Twitter: "So the more additional layers of complexity, the less, physicians would participate … the number never drops to zero, so I think regardless of sort of the scenario, there will always be physicians who will step forward."

Watch the full interview above.