Certainly the special committee that studied the Carter decision said that without good palliative care, you don't really have a choice. You can appreciate how somebody who would be suffering agonizing pain day after day after day, with no hope of any intervention, would choose assisted dying. That certainly was the pattern in countries that began to implement assisted dying without any palliative care to come alongside. However, countries that have put good quality palliative care in place find that 95% of people choose to live as well as they can for as long as they can, so I think we do have a responsibility to Canadians to give them a choice, and the 70% of Canadians who have no access to palliative care today really don't have a choice. That's why we need to move quickly to address the need.
On March 7th, 2017. See this statement in context.