Canada's Supreme Court has refused to hear an appeal of the Cambie case, a lawsuit over whether Canadians have a constitutional right to purchase health care outside their provincial gov't-run system.
Supreme Court can't be bothered to fix health care chaos it created | National Post:
April 15, 2023 - "Over the years, the Supreme Court of Canada has positioned itself as a staunch defender of rights Canadians didn’t even know they had. From abortion to prostitution to euthanasia, the court has shown a willingness ... to upend existing legal frameworks enacted by democratically elected legislatures based on a selective interpretation of the charter. Perhaps, then, it should be seen as a breath of fresh air that, late last week, the court declined to hear the appeal of a case arguing that access to private health services should be read into the charter’s Sec. 7 guarantee of the right to 'life, liberty and security of the person.' But it clearly highlights the type of cases the court is willing to take a bold stand on, and those that it’s more than happy to duck....
"We now live in a country where, if the substandard medicare system has left you in pain and suffering, you have a right to opt out by getting a doctor to pump your veins full of poison and end your life, but have no right to pay for the level of care you so desperately need. More importantly, in terms of legal consistency, we find ourselves in a situation in which the court has said that unnecessarily long wait times infringe the rights of Quebecers, but not those living in the rest of Canada.
"In its 2005 decision in Chaoulli v Quebec, the court ruled that the province’s ban on private health insurance for medically necessary services violated the Quebec charter’s guarantee to the “right to life, and to personal security, inviolability and freedom.” But the court could not agree on whether that extended to people outside La belle province because the [Canadian] charter’s Sec. 7 guarantee can be deprived 'in accordance with the principles of fundamental justice,' or by limits that can be 'demonstrably justified in a free and democratic society'....
"That contradiction has hung over the country for the past 18 years — 14 of which were spent by Dr. Brian Day, owner of Vancouver’s Cambie Surgery Centre, fighting to get some clarity. By refusing to hear Day’s appeal, the Supreme Court shirked its responsibility to sort out whether there really is a difference in law between Quebec and the other provinces. It also gave its de facto blessing to the idea that individual rights can be taken away, even if doing so causes demonstrable harms. Last summer, the British Columbia Court of Appeal declined to overturn lower court rulings in the case of Cambie Surgeries Corporation v British Columbia, but did so in such a roundabout and nonsensical way that it was almost begging for the country’s highest court to weigh in.
"At the initial trial, the court heard from numerous patients who had suffered poor health outcomes because they were forced to wait too long for medically necessary services. It was presented with a wealth of evidence showing that medical wait times were much longer in Canada than most other developed countries, and that the private surgery centres operating in B.C. had not caused harm to the public system. But these arguments were summarily dismissed.
"The Court of Appeal’s majority opinion chastised the trial judge for minimizing the harms caused by excessive wait times and failing to acknowledge that restrictions on paying to receive faster care can lead to death. This, the court agreed, is a violation of the charter’s guarantees of life and security of person....
"[N]onetheless [the court] ruled that such restrictions were in keeping with the principles of fundamental justice. To 'address the question as a matter of fundamental justice, for society as a whole,' the court made an abstract philosophical argument about what type of system people would choose if they had no idea what their lot in life would be and whether they would have the ability to pay. Which was odd, given that we can look to virtually any other advanced country to see how public and private health systems can coexist and thrive. And because we know that our system has merely limited access to private care to the ultra-rich, who can afford to travel to, and pay for care in, the United States....
"When the Supreme Court declines to hear an appeal, it usually means the lower court’s opinion becomes settled law. But in this case, we have a point of law that the Supreme Court itself could not agree on in 2005.... If ever there was a legal question calling out for a firm resolution from the highest court in the land, this is it."
Canadian healthcare is failing - and the courts are making it worse, Canadian Constitution Foundation, April 17, 2023:
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