I thank the committee for inviting us.
At the outset, I want to say that we welcome this legislative initiative, which responds to the requirements of the Supreme Court in the Carter ruling. Generally speaking, we feel that this is positive. However, I would like to share some of the reservations we have about the bill with committee members. I will highlight four points, and Mr. Ménard will provide more detail on them; then we will answer your questions.
The first reservation we have concerns the offence of counselling someone to cause their own death. There is an exemption in the bill for helping someone to die, but providing advice in that regard is not exempted. We think the bill should explicitly say that when a doctor explains all of the care available to a patient, including medical assistance in dying, that does not constitute an offence. In short, the bill should specify that for a physician to counsel a person on assistance in dying is not an offence. This has to be made very clear. Physicians or other health care professionals should not be charged with an offence if they provide information that could be interpreted as advice.
The second element is that in the bill the definition of medical assistance in dying also includes, for physicians, prescribing or providing a substance that will cause death, although the person will himself ingest the substance in question. This concerns us. One can easily imagine a situation that could arise if the health professional is not present at the time the person ingests the substance that will cause death. How can we know that that is really what caused the person's death? Moreover, there are ethical and legislative issues which may place health professionals in dilemmas or conflicts with their own standards and their own regulations. We think that the legislation should prepare for and include those situations. One cannot simply give someone a substance that can cause death without some kind of follow-up. We are concerned about that.
Also, with regard to the principle in the Carter ruling, the bill is somewhat too restrictive in our opinion. In order to obtain medical assistance in dying, it has to be shown that the medical condition of the person who is asking for this is one of advanced and irreversible decline in capacity, and that the natural death of that person has become reasonably foreseeable, in light of his overall medical condition, without necessarily having a prognosis on life expectancy. We feel that those criteria are not in the Carter ruling, and we think that the legislation has to be based on principles and statements that are in the Carter decision, and that they should frame this exercise. There is a clear risk that the bill will be challenged. Mr. Ménard will in fact go into this aspect more in depth.
The last point, which I will address quickly, concerns the new requirements regarding the documents physicians will have to complete. They must fill out forms. Even though the bill states that this must be done deliberately for an offence to be committed, it is somewhat excessive, in our opinion, to criminalize the fact of not having filled out a form properly. The provincial laws and regulations that regulate the medical profession should normally suffice for this type of information.
I will now yield the floor to Mr. Ménard.