In its decision in the Truchon and Gladu case, the Québec Superior Court concluded that this requirement infringed on the Charter rights of Canadians. The decision, however, failed to consider the careful balancing of autonomy and inequality interests that are at the heart of the law's requirement that death be reasonably foreseeable.

The Court's decision was delivered on the day that the election writ dropped. The customary 30 days permitted for filing an appeal of the decision fell entirely within the election period, permitting no opportunity for careful assessment and debate about how to respond. Because no appeal was filed, Parliament must now reconcile our MAiD law with this decision before mid-March. Vitally important judgements of complex social policy and law must therefore now be crunched into a very tight timeline.

For this reason, members of the VPS community are raising the alarm about the threat to equality rights embedded in the Truchon & Gladu decision. The reasonable foreseeability of natural death requirement is Canada's end-of-life criterion. It limits access to assisted death to those who are dying in order to balance autonomy rights with the equality rights of those who are elderly, ill, or disabled.

VPS Advisor Robert Lattanzio explained how an end-of-life criterion safeguards equality in an article in Le Droit (en français):

"Substantive equality recognizes the particular needs and circumstances of a disadvantaged group, including historical and present-day prejudice, stereotypes and disadvantage. It requires implementing measures that respond to these factors and avoiding measures that perpetuate such disadvantage.

The requirement for death to be reasonably foreseeable was a safeguard   intended to promote substantive equality for vulnerable persons with   disabilities. By legally limiting physician assisted death only to situations   where death was reasonably foreseeable, the law sent a message that all   lives, including the lives of vulnerable persons with disabilities, are valued."