Despite the Supreme Court's unanimous decision in Carter v. Canada, assisted dying continues to run into obstacles across the country. The highest-profile setback came last spring, when the federal government restricted the service to those for whom death is "reasonably foreseeable."

However, opponents of the right to medically assisted death have also been active at the provincial level. In Ontario, their efforts have been particularly fruitful, taking the form of a new variation on an old theme known as conscientious objection. For patients nearing the ends of their lives, as well as anybody concerned about our governments' capacity to shape health-care provision, the implications are startling.

Guest Post

There is no overwhelming evidence Canada's health-care system suffers from the dire sustainability crisis we hear so much about from mainstream media and right-wing think tanks.

Just the same, we hear plenty nowadays about the need to "bend the health-care cost curve," in Alberta and across Canada.

A recent book by Gregory Marchildon and Livio Di Matteo, Bending the Cost Curve in Health Care, identifies three main phases of health spending in recent Canadian history: