I think suggestions have been made about saying, well, nobody shall be coerced to perform medically assisted dying or participate in it. I think you could put that in the criminal law, but my sense is that this is not the real concern. The real concern isn't coercion in the sense of a gun to your head. The real concern is professional repercussions if you don't participate.
If that's the real concern, I think there are limits as to how far the feds can go. It's not a Criminal Code provision, I don't think, but in federal jurisdiction you have military hospitals in terms of professional consequences. That's not a very big part of the picture. If you're talking about essentially discrimination against people for exercising their conscience rights, the Canadian Human Rights Act has a very limited application, generally and specifically, in a way that could implicate people conscientiously objecting to medical assistance in dying. I think there are some things that could be done. Mostly it would be difficult for the feds to go very far with this.
I mean, the ministers have been saying that nothing in this act requires anybody to do anything. That's true. The question is whether you have more robust statements of that. I think you may be able to go some distance, but if you're looking for the strongest protections, it's provincial jurisdiction.