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Canada's New Governor General Prosecuted Milosevic, and Canada's Assisted-Death Law May Widen to Mental Illness.
News for residents of the “11th province”: Canadians abroad.
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Canada's New Governor General Prosecuted Milosevic
Canada's new Governor General is the woman who put Slobodan Milosevic in the dock.
Louise Arbour takes office Monday as the country's 31st GG, with a 21-gun salute off Parliament Hill and an Inuit qulliq lamp lit by an elder marking the ceremony in the Senate. She is 79, a Montreal native and fluently bilingual, in addition to being a former Supreme Court justice.
Before the court she ran the UN war crimes tribunals for Rwanda and the former Yugoslavia, where she became the first prosecutor in history to indict a sitting head of state for crimes against humanity. She also won the first genocide conviction under the 1948 convention and was the first to charge sexual assault as a crime against humanity.
She takes over the reins from Mary Simon, Canada's first Indigenous viceregal. The role is mostly ceremonial, but the GG swears in cabinet, signs every federal bill into law, and acts as commander-in-chief of the armed forces.
Read more: Global News / Canada's National Observer
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Canada's Assisted-Death Law May Widen to Mental Illness
In about nine months, Canadians whose only medical condition is a mental illness could qualify for a doctor-assisted death.
Under current law, the ban on medical assistance in dying, or MAID, for mental illness on its own expires March 17 next year. A special joint committee of MPs and senators is expected to make a report before the end of June on whether the country is ready, and Justice Minister Sean Fraser is waiting on that document before deciding the next move. Until now MAID has required a physical condition.
MAID accounts for 5.1% of all deaths in Canada (and 7.9% in Quebec); that’s about 16,499 people in the latest federal count. Around 90 disability and mental health groups want Ottawa to drop the expansion permanently. Recent polling found Canadians split almost evenly, with 43% in favour and 39% against.
Read more: The Conversation / CBC News