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Justice Minister David LamettiWikimedia Commons

OTTAWA, January 17, 2019 (LifeSiteNews) – Canada has a new Minister of Justice, and his sudden appointment has incited pro-life fears and “progressive” hopes for even more permissive changes to the nation’s already-controversial “medically assisted dying” law.

Nova Scotia MP Scott Brison announced last week that he was resigning his post as Treasury Board president and would not seek re-election, prompting Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to shuffle other cabinet members to new positions and name Montreal MP David Lametti as his new Justice Minister, the Canadian Press reported. Lametti was sworn in Monday morning as part of a group of five ministers.

Lametti was a law professor and founding member of the Centre for Intellectual Property Policy at McGill University in Montreal, as well as an avowed rock ‘n’ roll fan, but many are more interested in his past statements on euthanasia and how he may act on them in his new position.

Lametti and his predecessor, Jody Wilson-Raybould, have equally bad voting records on the right to life, but “Lametti may be more aggressive and dangerous in his new position,” Campaign Life Coalition vice president Jeff Gunnarson told LifeSiteNews. “These politicians have evil intentions, they are blinded by their lust for power and destruction of human life in the name of progressive humanism, a religion of depravity, amoralism and death.”

In 2016, the government enacted Bill C-14, the so-called “medically assisted dying law. One year later, the Euthanasia Prevention Coalition says, it led to higher-than-projected numbers of euthanasia deaths and rampant concerns about unreported cases, medical personnel abusing the self-reporting system to cover up questionable uses of lethal injections, physicians being forced to refer patients for assisted deaths, and court cases attempting to use the law to broaden the number of people who can be killed.

Yet some claim the current law is not permissive enough – and Lametti agrees with them. The Globe and Mail reported that he was one of just four MPs to vote against the 2016 law, and did so on the grounds that it was still too restrictive. Wilson-Raybould introduced the law but opposed making further changes to it.

Specifically, Dying with Dignity Canada president Shanaaz Gokool hopes Lametti will back “Audrey’s amendment,” named after terminal breast cancer patient Audrey Parker, which would let people who had previously been approved for euthanasia sign a declaration ensuring they will still be killed regardless of how their mental state deteriorates before it happens.

“Trudeau knows how extreme this man is, and deliberately chose him for Justice Minister,” Campaign Life Coalition director of political operations Jack Fonseca told LifeSiteNews. “Trudeau knows exactly what he’s doing. He wants Lametti to expand the categories of killable people under Canada’s euthanasia regime, until everyone who wants to kill themselves, can do so.”

Fonseca went on to suggest that Trudeau ultimately wants to make even children eligible for euthanasia, something a group of Canadian pediatricians and so-called “bio-ethicists” publicly advocated for in September.

“This is one more reason why the upcoming federal election is so important. If the Liberals win, I predict that we will have child euthanasia, euthanasia for the depressed, plus a massive expansion of euthanasia for all, imposed on us by Trudeau and his extremist new Justice Minister,” he added, noting that such legislation was unlikely before the election but Lametti could still drop some restrictions, like the requirement that patients with a prior euthanasia consent on the record reconfirm their consent immediately before a lethal injection.