Accurate reporting and scrupulous monitoring reflect the value Canada places on human life. These expert activities ensure the investigation of deaths that occur in uncertain, dangerous, and preventable situations. They result in recommendations to benefit others, and they satisfy the public that the circumstances surrounding death will not be overlooked, concealed, or ignored.
Therefore, we respectfully make two recommendations. First, we recommend that the ministers of justice and health invite chief coroners and medical examiners and the Forensic Pathology section of the Canadian Association of Pathologists to a meeting to agree on terminology of cause and manner of death for the practice of medical assistance in dying. Second, we recommend that this committee require, under subsection 241.31(3), that reports of the provision of medical assistance in dying come to the federal government only from the provincial or territorial coroner and medical examiner's office without exception.
These two recommendations would help the federal government to ensure that medical assistance in dying is reported and monitored by the book. They would help safeguard patients, the general public, and physicians, and generate reliable data that would reveal trends of interest and concern.
In sum, we respectfully ask that you establish the reporting and monitoring of medical assistance in dying in a manner that is accurate and scrupulous and in these ways excellent.
Thank you.