Good morning.
Thank you to the parliamentary committee for inviting Dying With Dignity Canada to these hearings this morning.
We are the national advocacy organization uniquely qualified to speak to this issue. We represent the 84% of Canadians who strongly support physician-assisted dying, and our work is informed by our disability advisory council and our physicians advisory council. We are going to speak to you today about principles for eligibility, protection, and access to ensure a fully functional national framework for assisted dying in Canada.
Before we begin, we would like to address the frequent references throughout these hearings regarding the jurisdictional validity of proposed legislation.
We're not constitutional lawyers; we're concerned about Canadians. We urge that there be cooperation among the federal government, the provinces, and the territories, without which, we are deeply worried, we will be left with a provincial patchwork approach that may mean access for the most desperately ill will depend on whether their province has shown leadership in legislation.
Regarding the issue of eligibility, for us Carter sets the floor, not the ceiling. The Supreme Court stated that competent adults with a grievous and irremediable medical condition that causes them enduring and intolerable suffering should be able to access assisted death. The court agrees that only the person, the individual herself or himself, can decide if their suffering is intolerable. As we've heard this morning, “grievous” is already a term used by the criminal courts, in common language, and in common law to represent serious and very severe conditions. Therefore, we don't require any further definition. We urge this committee not to recommend a pre-approved list of conditions for assisted dying.
I'll now turn it over to Wanda Morris.