The first set of safeguards, in the end-of-life regime, where we've used the reasonable foreseeability of a natural death to be a channelling criterion and not an eligibility criterion, were well known by medical practitioners and by families. For the most part, we have kept them. We have taken out the things they have told us were prolonging suffering unnecessarily. Those are the vast majority of cases: terminal cancer, people near the end, everyone preparing for the inevitable. We feel we have made that part of this more compassionate for the vast majority of people.
In the non-end-of-life regime, as Minister Qualtrough pointed out, we wanted to make sure that people had adequate support and information to make a decision, either about how they wanted to live or about how they wanted to die. We were told again by experts, families and practitioners.... In the case of catastrophic accidents, for example, your first reaction is often that you'd rather die. It's only after a few weeks and seeing what the alternatives are that you come to the conclusion that you have a lot of things to live for, and you could live this way or that way, given the right information and the right support.
We wanted to make sure those safeguards were embedded in our regime. Some countries require six months. We have required 90 days for the assessment period. It's not a waiting period, but it's the assessment period when the person is consulting with their family, their doctors, their nurses and getting the appropriate options, getting consultations on supports that will be available should they choose to live, and how they might live.
We're trying to balance two different types of scenarios. The non-end-of-life scenario is the less frequent number of cases. As I said, the vast majority of cases are the end-of-life scenario. It is what medical practitioners and MAID service providers are used to working with, and we think we've made that better.