Thank you, Mr. Chair.
I'm Dr. Cindy Forbes, president of the Canadian Medical Association. I'm also a family physician from Nova Scotia. I'm joined today by Dr. Jeff Blackmer, vice-president of medical professionalism at the CMA. Dr. Blackmer has led the CMA's work on assisted dying.
Today I'd like to begin by first reviewing a brief history of CMA's public and physician consultations on end-of-life care, followed by an overview of our report, “Principles-based Recommendations for a Canadian Approach to Assisted Dying”.
Before doing so, I would like to flag two critical issues for the committee's consideration. Both issues will be central to ensuring effective patient access.
First, how can we ensure that the legislative and regulatory framework achieves an appropriate balance between physicians' ability to follow their conscience and patients' ability to access physician-assisted dying? Second, how can we ensure that we emerge with a consistent, pan-Canadian framework?
We will speak to these issues as part of our remarks and will welcome your questions during this appearance. We want to highlight the potential role of federal legislation as an efficient and effective means of addressing these issues.
I'll start with a bit of history. As the national professional association representing Canada's physicians, the CMA has long recognized the importance of end-of-life care. We've played an important role over the past couple of years, in particular by leading the national discussion on end-of-life care, including assisted dying. Over the course of 2014, the CMA initiated the broadest consultation in Canada in recent years. We hosted town hall meetings across the country, as well as an online dialogue, to consult with the public as well as physicians on issues related to end-of-life care. This consultation has been instrumental in informing both our position and our focus on this issue.
During the Carter case, the CMA appeared before the Supreme Court as an intervenor, as a friend of the court, with the purpose of representing the physician perspective. In its ruling, the court made reference to the CMA's position. Following the Supreme Court's landmark decision last February, the CMA initiated the development of recommendations to guide the implementation of assisted dying. The development of these recommendations included extensive consultation and deliberation with CMA's committee on ethics, with Canadian physicians, and with key medical and health stakeholders.
In addition, over the course of the fall the CMA met with numerous provincial and territorial health ministers to discuss these recommendations. Our recommendations have now been finalized and were publicly released last week. The committee has been provided with our “Principles-based Recommendations for a Canadian Approach to Assisted Dying”. Guided by a set of ten foundational principles, the recommendations address the following four areas: patient eligibility for access to an assessment for assisted dying; procedural safeguards to ensure eligibility criteria are met; the roles and responsibilities of the attending and consulting physicians; and how to appropriately balance conscientious objection with a patient's request to access assisted dying.
This last issue, that of conscientious objection, is one we would like to discuss in more detail, as it is of particular concern.
I will now turn the microphone over to my colleague, Dr. Jeff Blackmer, to discuss this issue.