I think the areas in which there is the most scope for overlap relate to the procedural safeguards, things like the physician needing to assess the patient's mental competency, the physician needing to have discussions with the patient on several occasions, the patient needing to fill in a form that is signed and dated and witnessed by at least three independent witnesses. I think these are measures that Parliament could consider as part of a regulatory regime from a criminal perspective if it felt that those sorts of details were necessary to protect vulnerable individuals, but that said, those are the sorts of medical practices that are not terribly dissimilar from what physicians already do under applicable provincial regulations, laws, and medical policies. The provinces and territories may well also feel that those are matters they are quite comfortable dealing with.
The issue of compliance review is one that I've already talked about. Bodies to which a referral would be made if a case of non-compliance were found would largely be provincial.
When you get to the question of data collection and monitoring and oversight for public accountability and public confidence, representations have been made to the various advisory bodies, which have been consulting over the last few months, suggesting that the monitoring at a national level would be especially important, because otherwise you could have 13 different bodies monitoring and that situation might become especially cumbersome.
I know there are concerns about differences and concerns that Canadians might find one regime more friendly to them than another. On the other hand, there are existing mechanisms already in place provincially to deal with discipline of physicians, policing and law enforcement and that sort of thing. With regard to the safety features, there are some complications, but perhaps monitoring stands out the most as the one that would benefit from a national review.
On questions of medical eligibility, from a purely criminal law perspective, when we would create a defence or an exemption to a crime, Parliament would normally say it would be a defence under certain circumstances. From a purely criminal perspective, that would be part of criminal law, but there would be scope if the committee wanted to allow provinces and territories to make those decisions to proceed that way as well.