Second, I very much appreciate your principles-based recommendations for a Canadian approach. In “Stage 2: Before undertaking assisted dying”, you call for a “second, independent consulting physician”.
I've heard from others that this second physician ought to be a specialist in the field—an oncologist in one case, or someone familiar with ALS, or perhaps a psychiatrist in another case. Would you subscribe to that idea? Would you agree that it ought to be...?
Is there a fear that two doctors in the same small town might see the world very differently, and one needs an outsider, perhaps a specialist, to intervene?