 This review is pertaining to Beverley's confession within her audiobook, that she had an attachment to assisted suicide with her previous husband Rory a couple of years before she heard the Rodriguez case. How Beverley weighed recusing herself from Rodriguez but did not in order to dissent to the ban being upheld, to then using her dissent in Rodriguez as a planted seed leading up to Carter 2015, to satisfy her personal obsession to change the law and to "come full circle".
Here are some quotes of audioclips from Beverley's audiobook Chapter 25 1, below these quotes I provide my full written review:
In September 1992, I returned to a fall and winter docket charged with fascinating issues. But one seized me, preoccupied me, dominated my waking (and sometimes sleeping) hours until its release in the fall of 1993, Rodriguez v. British Columbia (Attorney General). Sue Rodriguez lived on Vancouver Island. Her rich life was interrupted by a diagnosis of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, or ALS, known more commonly as Lou Gehrig’s disease, after the famous baseball player. ALS is a disease that gradually paralyzes people because the brain is no longer able to communicate with the muscles of the body. Over time, as the muscles break down, people living with ALS lose the ability to walk, talk, eat, swallow, and, eventually, breathe. Sue could no longer walk and was having difficulty talking. But her mind was as alert as ever. She thought about her end—about the long period when she wouldn’t be able to do anything but wait for the disease to take away her ability to breathe. She wanted to live as long as she had the capacity to enjoy life, but avoid the final painful phase. The problem was that by that time, she would be unable to take her own life. Nor, as the law then stood, could anyone help her. Suicide was legal in Canada, but assisting someone to die by suicide was a crime leading to imprisonment under the Criminal Code.
The British Columbia Court of Appeal had rejected Sue’s claim to assisted suicide, and she appealed to the Supreme Court of Canada. As the hearing date approached, I worried whether I was still too close to Rory’s death to sit on the case. I went to see my chief justice, now Antonio Lamer. He had replaced Brian Dickson as chief justice when Brian retired in the spring of 1990. “I’m not sure I should sit on this case,” I said. “I do not have settled views on the outcome, but I feel very close to it after—” “After what you went through with Rory,” he interrupted. I nodded. “You should not let that stop you from sitting,” he said. “Judges are human beings. They bring their life experiences to the cases they decide. That is good, provided they remember that their ultimate duty is to be faithful to the law.” So I agreed to sit on the case and prepared for the hearing. On May 20, 1993, the nine justices of the court filed in to hear the Rodriguez case. The frail figure of Sue Rodriguez in her wheelchair, devastated by disease and struggling to remain upright, seared my mind. I knew that kind of suffering; I had lived it.
In the dark weeks before Rory’s final descent into unconsciousness, he suffered enormously. He suffered great physical pain. He suffered equally devastating psychological pain as a once proud man no longer able to manage his basic functions. One morning, as he lay in his bed in our home, he asked a special thing of me—to give him the morphine we had been doling out drop by drop in a single massive dose. “I want to die now,” he said. Tears in my eyes, I left the room. I could not do it. I had always thought of myself as gutsy. I had never shrunk from unpleasant things. But this, I knew in my heart, I could not do. Because it was against the law. Because I could not physically bring myself to do it. Racked by guilt at failing my husband’s last request, I wept in a hospital chair while Rory was in the adjoining treatment room. A doctor found me, and I told him everything. “I can’t do it,” I whispered. The doctor did not judge. “Then you shouldn’t do it,” he said. “Remember, you will go on. You have to live with yourself after.” Then he added, “We’ll do what we can.” Were the treatments that followed only for the pain? Or did they shorten the remaining days of his life? I didn’t know and I didn’t ask. All I knew was that the pain lessened, and Rory passed away peacefully.
Now Sue Rodriguez was before me, and I was forced to relive that difficult time and the choice I had made. Once again, although in different form, I was confronted by the question: Should a suffering person in the final stages of life be allowed allowed to end her life with dignity? In a five-to-four decision, the court held that the answer was no. Justice Sopinka, writing for the majority, held that the ban on assisted suicide did not violate the liberty guarantee under Section 7 of the Charter because prohibiting assisted suicide, which risks abuse of vulnerable people, reflects a fundamental Canadian value and does not offend the principles of fundamental justice. Nor, in his view, did it offend the guarantee against cruel and unusual punishment. And even if it offended the equality guarantee, it would be justified.
I dissented. The ban on assisted suicide arbitrarily limited the right of a person to deal with her body as she chose and thus violated the guarantee of liberty, I wrote for myself and Justice L’Heureux-Dubé. Justice Cory agreed with both my reasons and those of Chief Justice Lamer, who dissented on the ground that denying the right to assisted dying violated the equality guarantee of the Charter. The law, I wrote, allowed some people to end their lives but denied the same choice to Sue Rodriguez, violating autonomy and the principles of fundamental justice. This violation was not a reasonable limit on the right to liberty. Everyone, I concluded, has the right to life and liberty, as Section 7 of the Charter says. That, it seemed to me, must include the final liberty to determine how and when to die. If a person, sound of mind and in great suffering, makes the decision to end her life, she should be allowed to do so. In my view, the danger of abuse could be met by a court order stating that the judge was satisfied with the patient’s desire to die, and freely consented to assistance in dying.
Sue Rodriguez lost her case but died peacefully with her doctor at her side—and in the arms of her dear friend Member of Parliament Svend Robinson—some months later. Neither the doctor nor Robinson was prosecuted. Two decades later, in Carter v. Canada (Attorney General), the Supreme Court of Canada, in a decision “by the court” (a decision issued in the name of all the justices, of which I was one) took up my dissent in Rodriguez and ruled that the provision criminalizing assisted suicide violated the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. A person enduring intolerable suffering has the right to end her life. I had come full circle.
Beverley's actions violated the Bangalore Principles of Judicial Conduct 2, the Basic Principles on the Independence of the Judiciary 3, the Universal Declaration on the Independence of Justice 4, and other impartiality tests and statutes. The rule of law seeks to eliminate decisions based on extraneous influences conflicts of interest, bias, pressures, and oblique motives. It was highly inappropriate and unacceptable that McLachlin's court allowed these factors to influence the Carter 2015 decision.
Beverley admitted that her views in Supreme Court of Canada cases involving assisted dying were shaped by her husband Rory’s plea for assisted death. This conflict of interest casts doubt on Beverley’s ability to be objective on issues regarding assisted dying. In Carter 2015, Beverley had to ensure that both her husband’s plea for assisted death and her positional legacy to reaffirm her past dissent, decisions, and stands on the issue were consistent so she could successfully "come full circle".
Additionally, within a December 2009 interview Beverley did on TVO's Agenda with Steve Paikin, Beverley admitted her dissents are intentional to provide seeds for future developments, which reveals that her dissent in Rodriguez was a a planted seed she would use in a future assisted dying case. Then Chief Justice, Beverley stated to Steve Paikin "there is a view that the dissents provide seeds for future developments" 5.
Beverley's prejudices and predilections created a tunnel vision where she erroneously believes that assisted dying is only a two sided issue, and that she lived both sides of the issue. Assisted dying is not just a two sided issue, it is a multi-faceted issue. Beverley has not lived all sides of it.
Beverley ignores the fact that vulnerable and disabled persons endure ableism, stigma, isolation, impoverishment, lack of services to live, oppression, captivity, and exclusion. She ignores the high rates of elder abuse and the abuses that persons with disabilities must endure daily. Beverley also completely ignored other coercive factors.
All of these facts have been proven in many research reports and investigations released by the United Nations, the OECD, the Commonwealth Fund's Heath Care ranking, and other national and international investigations pertaining to Canada's poor rankings, poor performances, and history of abuses upon vulnerable persons. Beverley does not live with, nor has ever lived with, a lifelong disease or disability. Beverley’s and Rory's privilege means and backgrounds reveal they never personally faced any of the issues faced by disabled and vulnerable persons.
Another reveal in Beverley's audiobook is the additional extraneous influences regarding Beverley’s personal relationship with Antonio Lamer and his wife compromising her independent judgement when her initial reaction was to recuse herself from Rodriguez.Instead of disclosing her issues and original judgement to recuse herself to all other jurists and the parties involved, Beverley only disclosed this to her friend Lamer.
Here is a quote of an audioclip from chapter 27 6, of Beverley describing some of her personal relationship with the Lamers:
Tony welcomed me warmly when I arrived on the court. He and his wife, Danièle Tremblay-Lamer (later a judge of the federal court), set about organizing a series of dinners in their home with the goal of connecting me with prominent Ottawa bachelors. Their attempts at matchmaking failed utterly, but we enjoyed several good dinners, ushered in by the port-infused consommé Tony had spent the afternoon brewing in the kitchen.
Beverley and Lamer had a very personal and luxurious relationship where they would enjoy parties and alcohol at Lamer’s home. Lamer and his wife would attempt to enhance Beverley’s love life by setting her up on dates, and Beverley confided all her personal details to Lamer (so he knew everything about her personal life, including how to persuade her).
The publicly funded Supreme Court of Canada meant to have independent and impartial judges was actually a members-only hedonistic resort incapable of impartiality.
Additionally, pertaining to examples of when she would recuse herself within that December 2009 interview Beverley did on TVO's Agenda with Steve Paikin, Beverley stated to Steve Paikin that even a situation like a past show of support for a sports team would be enough to validate recusing herself from a trial if that sports team was involved in a Supreme Court case.
Beverley said to Paikin, "in the event that something I had done had indicated too great a love for the Ottawa Senators, should there be such a thing. Then I think I would have to recuse myself.", "I think we try to watch out for things that are issues that could come before the courts. And we don’t want to either take a stand or be seen as taking a stand on those issues. As you said at the beginning of this question, we have to preserve not only our actual impartiality but the appearance of impartiality. So we try to avoid getting involved in anything contentious in the community" 7.
So it is absolutely outrageous Beverley tries to justify not recusing herself from assisted dying cases due to her attachments on the issue, but she would recuse herself from a sports team's trial because she cheered for them at a game.
Truth Be Told exposes that Canada has never had a fair and impartial hearing pertaining to assisted dying. Truth Be told reveals that overall, our judicial system is broken; And that while access to justice is extremely poor and nearly non-existent for disabled and vulnerable persons in our country, some judges are more concerned about their vanity, luxurious lifestyles, and obsessed with setting public policy on very complex political and social issues to what they want it to be when that is not what they are supposed to be doing, and some judges are not revealing their conflicts of interest and bias.
Further, It is shameful for a judge to turn their ruling on controversial topics involving life and death into a money-making opportunity. Despite being retired, Beverley still has a responsibility to protect the most important principles in our free and democratic society based on rule of law: judicial independence and impartiality. Beverley is once again manipulating jurisprudence. A retired judge should not be seeking prestige, glory, nor remuneration based on past rulings. If a retired judge does, it suggests that they made the ruling to gain public, personal gain or political favour. If our society does not have an independent and impartial judiciary, then all is lost.
I give Beverley's Truth be told a one out five rating.
Thank you very much for your time.
Sincerely,
Roger Foley.
Source links:
1. per at 1-minute and 22-seconds, of this video review containing audioclips from Beverley's audiobook Chapter 25 regarding her conflicts of interests during assisted dying cases.; at http://www.assistedlife.ca/mclachlinaudiobookreview-rf-video.mp4
2. per the United Nations The Bangalore Pinciples Of Judicial Conduct 2002; A judge shall exercise the judicial function independently on the basis of the judge’s assessment of the facts and in accordance with a conscientious understanding of the law, free of any extraneous influences, inducements, pressures, threats or interference, direct or indirect, from any quarter or for any reason.; at https://www.unodc.org/pdf/crime/corruption/judicial_group/Bangalore_principles.pdf
3. per the United Nations Basic Principles on the Independence of the Judiciary; The judiciary shall decide matters before them impartially, on the basis of facts and in accordance with the law, without any restrictions, improper influences, inducements, pressures, threats or interferences, direct or indirect, from any quarter or for any reason.; at https://www.ohchr.org/EN/ProfessionalInterest/Pages/IndependenceJudiciary.aspx
4. per the United Nations Universal Declaration on the Independence of Justice; A judge shall not sit in a case where a reasonable apprehension of bias on his part may arise.; at https://www.ohchr.org/EN/ProfessionalInterest/Pages/IndependenceJudiciary.aspx
5. Link to the video exchange during the December 2009 Agenda with Steve Paikin inteview with Beverley McLachlin, at 13m16s, were she admitted her dissents are intentional to provide seeds for future developments.; at https://youtu.be/osKitRF30aU?t=796
6. per at 9-minutes and 49-seconds, of this video review containing audioclip from Beverley's audiobook Chapter 27 regarding Lamer personal relationship.; at http://www.assistedlife.ca/mclachlinaudiobookreview-rf-video.mp4
7. Link to the video exchange during the December 2009 Agenda with Steve Paikin inteview with Beverley McLachlin, at 15m17s, petaining to examples of when she would recuse herself for instance showing love to a sports team.; And in, in the event that something I had done had indicated too great a love for the Ottawa Senators, should there be such a thing. Then I think I would have to recuse myself.; I don’t think a judge would do that. I think we try to watch out for things that are issues that could come before the courts. And we don’t want to either take a stand or be seen as taking a stand on those issues. As you said at the beginning of this question, we have to preserve not only our actual impartiality but the appearance of impartiality. So we try to avoid getting involved in anything contentious in the community. So that is a limit.; at https://youtu.be/osKitRF30aU?t=917
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