Welcome to the witnesses, and thank you for your evidence.
Your Eminence, I appreciate your faith-based opposition to physician-assisted dying, but that's not the issue before us. The court has made a decision and we're bound by that decision, and physician-assisted dying is a constitutional right for those eligible to access it. I appreciate the concerns that you've expressed about conscientious objectors and nobody being forced to participate. But it seems to me, and I'd ask for your comments, that what we're really looking at here is, we ought to be looking at it through the eyes of the affected patient. The rights and beliefs we might have have to be accommodated to meet those rights that the patient has.
Perhaps you would wish that there is not going to be physician-assisted death in this country, but there is, so what particular, specific precautions should we be recommending be put in place to protect from abuse and protect the vulnerable? I think all of us would want to afford every protection to the vulnerable, but what specifically should we be recommending that would allow physician-assisted death to proceed, but at the same time provide appropriate protections for the vulnerable?