Canada

Those in favour of the Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill insist they’ve addressed critics’ principal concerns and that ‘stringent safeguards’ are in place. But it is impossible to see how this could be the case. If suicide is institutionalised as a form of medical treatment it is inevitable that vulnerable people will feel under pressure to opt for it, and inevitable that the bill will in time be amended and extended. In Canada, denying assisted suicide to people who are not terminally ill has been ruled to be discrimination Under the terms of the existing bill, a terminally ill person given less than six months to live will

In an ideal world, I wouldn’t have chosen an election year for my American book tour. It’s not that I dislike elections generally. And – praise be – a population of 300 million Americans has managed to raise one presidential candidate who is not a convicted felon awaiting sentence. No, my problem with American elections – and it viscerally distresses me every four years – is the affront to democracy called the electoral college. I’ve done the maths. The electoral college can hand you the presidency even if your opponent receives three-quarters of the popular vote. Of course that’s a hypothetical extreme. The familiar reality is that campaigns ignore all

A few weeks ago, I was present when my aunt, a Canadian citizen born in the UK, chose to die through euthanasia, or as it is euphemistically called in Canada, Medical Assistance in Dying or MAiD. Being British, I wasn’t familiar with the process. What I saw horrified me, but it was also chillingly seductive. My aunt was 72 and in the early stages of motor neurone disease. She had lost the use of one arm but though frail, was living independently and had perfect mental acuity. She was an artist who had worked in the theatre for 40 years designing beautiful and elaborate costumes. For several decades following her

You’d assume the reaction to the SNP’s new hate crime laws would make other authoritarian governments hesitate before introducing similar legislation. Humza Yousaf has become a laughing stock and his approval ratings have fallen by 15 points. But apparently not. The new Irish Taoiseach, Simon Harris, is determined to railroad through the Criminal Justice (Incitement to Violence or Hatred and Hate Offences) Bill, Donald Tusk’s government in Poland wants to introduce a new law that would make it a criminal offence to ‘defame’ a member of the LGBT community and Justin Trudeau is pressing ahead with an Online Harms Bill that makes our own Online Safety Act seem like the

Readers would doubtless find it hard to believe that the late Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh kidnapped and killed indigenous children while on a state visit to Canada in 1964. Yet this story circulated for years in Canada along with other horror stories of the rape, torture and murder of indigenous children at the hands of depraved priests and nuns. The bodies, it was said, were thrown into furnaces or secretly buried at dead of night. These accusations were linked to boarding schools run by various religious bodies first established in the 19th century and finally closed in the 1990s. A Truth and Reconciliation Commission was set up in

My favourite Martin Amis novel was his 1991 book Time’s Arrow. It is a pyrotechnically brilliant work in which all time goes backwards. On publication it was criticised in some quarters because the novel includes a reverse version of the Holocaust and some thought Amis was using the Holocaust as a literary device. As so often, these transient critics didn’t get the point. It is hard to say anything new about the Holocaust or find any new angle on it. Europe, like Canada, does not believe in the death penalty for criminals. Only for victims But Amis managed, because towards the end of the novel (that is, at the beginning