The RCMP are investigating the case of a Nova Scotia man who took his wife to an assisted-suicide clinic in Switzerland where she died.

Eric MacDonald has said the situation has made him question his faith and his country's laws.
(CBC)

The police force said Tuesday it has opened a file into the case. It intends to question Eric MacDonald about his wife's death on June 8, and will then decide if it can lay charges.

Elizabeth MacDonald, 38, had a severe form of multiple sclerosis that left her in a wheelchair, unable to move. As well, her throat was beginning to paralyze.

Her husband said she feared becoming trapped in her own body and had tried to commit suicide herself a year ago.

"I wish to heavens she was still here, but I couldn't ask her to go on suffering that way," MacDonald told CBC News at his home in Windsor, northwest of Halifax.

MacDonald said Elizabeth asked him to take her to a clinic in Zurich that helps patients who want to die, but who are too ill to kill themselves. Swiss law allows assisted suicide, provided it's done for unselfish reasons.

Staff at the clinic gave Elizabeth a glass of barbiturates and told his wife she would die if she drank it, said MacDonald.

Elizabeth MacDonald, shown in an undated photo, had a severe form of multiple sclerosis that left her in a wheelchair, unable to move.
(CBC)

"She said, 'I understand that,'" MacDonald recalled. "And she drank it down without any hesitations, just like that.

"I got on the bed with her and cradled her in my arms until she died."

The RCMP was informed of the case by Canada's Euthanasia Prevention Council, which lobbies against assisted suicide.

"If she was assisted or aided in that process by members here in Canada, that is contrary to the Criminal Code," Hugh Scher of the council told CBC News in Toronto. "So that is something we ought to understand better."

Under Canadian law, assisting in a suicide is illegal and can be punished with up to 14 years in jail.

Nova Scotia RCMP Const. Les Kakonyi said this is not a typical investigation and officers will be talking with Crown prosecutors to determine what, if any, charges may be laid.

"We have to be able to establish whether there was any wrongdoing in directing her to seek out this clinic," Kakonyi said.

Wife's letter shows frustration in living

Robert Currie, who teaches law at Halifax's Dalhousie University, said a conviction in MacDonald's case would be unlikely.

"Certainly accompanying someone to the situation and being with them at the time would not amount to the commission of an offence of aiding and abetting suicide," Currie said.

MacDonald, a retired Anglican priest, said the situation has made him question his faith and his country's laws.

"I'm angry that Canadian law prevents people from terminating their lives when it becomes obvious the remainder of their life is going to be intolerable," he said.

His wife was equally frustrated by the law, he said, producing a letter she wrote before she died.

"It is intolerable and unacceptable that I cannot be assisted to die here in Canada, in my own home, in my own bed, surrounded by those I love," the letter reads.