Sure.
How is judicial oversight working now in terms of the constitutional exemption? Are there inordinate delays?
My sense is that this doesn't appear to be the case.
I think it's worth reviewing that data and looking at it. Certainly it is not meant to cause inordinate delay, although Mr. Paterson hearkened back to the abortion experience. We're several decades after the fact. We have technologies that should be able to allow virtual connections so that people can have more expedited review.
The even broader issue to consider with judicial oversight is whether there is a public interest in knowing how this takes place and in being as transparent and objective as we can so that Canada can say to itself and its countrymen and to the international community that although the Supreme Court has made this legal, that does not necessarily mean that it has made it medical. We have not yet figured out whether or not this clearly fits into the system of health care.
Having been on the external panel, I went around the world and spoke to different physicians, and I can tell you nobody comfortably responded to the question that yes, this is part of medicine. We had one physician in Oregon who described this as an act of love. We had a physician who was engaged in these practices in the Benelux countries, who himself was directly involved in this, and he said this is not medicine; this is a social act; this is a change in our social contract.
Well, again, if that's the case, wouldn't Canada want to commit to the most transparent process possible, the most objective process possible, and for the first five years insist on judicial oversight, not to create inordinate delay, but to say we're going to do this in a very transparent way, and we're going to be courageous enough five years from now to live with the outcome of that data? If the data says that we have been too restrictive, then I think all of us need to be adherent to the data and say that it is time to open it wider. If the data says that there have been many instances vis-à-vis judicial oversight where people have been found to be vulnerable, and other steps needed to be taken, then we have to stand back and say, well, perhaps we are narrow enough, or we need to be even narrower.
Those are the rationales that I would offer for judicial oversight.