Physician-Assisted Dying committee  Thank you, Mr. Chair. Honourable members, thank you for the invitation to appear before you to discuss this extremely important topic. Thank you, Mr. Chair and honourable members of this committee, for the invitation to appear before you on this most important issue. I will be

Physician-Assisted Dying committee  I will do my best to summarize the rest of my presentation, Mr. Chair. I want to point out that autonomy is one of the core values outlined in the Carter decision. As for vulnerability, it is, of course, a complex and subtle concept. Although the term “vulnerable populations” h

Physician-Assisted Dying committee  Thank you for the question. You are right to point out that physician-assisted dying may require a number of interventions from the Government of Canada. I want to emphasize that, whatever the Government of Canada's interventions may be, it is obviously desirable for the provinc

Physician-Assisted Dying committee  Yes. Thank you very much. What I will say comes from the 15,000 people who answered the questionnaire and also from the consultations we had all over Canada. As you know, we met many experts, groups, associations, and so on. There is a concern, expressed by many people, about t

Physician-Assisted Dying committee  —because of course due respect for the decision of the Supreme Court of Canada is necessary in this case.

Physician-Assisted Dying committee  I don't think it should be assumed that there shouldn't be provincial legislation. Medical aid in dying, or physician-assisted death, is related to both criminal law and health. With regard to health, a certain part of Canada has said that it is a matter that is under co-shared j

Physician-Assisted Dying committee  Of course some people argue for these terms to be defined, and some people argue for the opposite. Those who argue for the terms to be defined say that in fact these terms could be interpreted in different ways and that the physicians who will be facing the physician-assisted d

Physician-Assisted Dying committee  Well, the fact is that this question of advance directive is not a question that we have examined as closely as other questions. I think it would be good for this committee, or eventually other institutions, to pay more attention to the specific question of advance directives.

Physician-Assisted Dying committee  Yes, geography is a challenge for Canada, of course, because many people live in very remote communities. Some people expressed concerns that these people living in remote communities would not have fair access to physician-assisted death. This is what brought some experts to s

Physician-Assisted Dying committee  Concerning the representative sample for the question “To what extent do you agree or disagree that you...should be able to receive a physician's assistance to die” if you “have advanced dementia and cannot make decisions on your own”, what I see in the report is that 42% of peop

Physician-Assisted Dying committee  Combined, it's 62%: 20% agreed, and 42% strongly agreed.

Physician-Assisted Dying committee  I first want to say that you are correct. The Parliament of Canada can go beyond the Carter decision, which adopts the principle that physician-assisted dying is accessible to an adult. Of course, that raises the question on who is an adult and at what age adulthood is reached. N

Physician-Assisted Dying committee  That is clearly a possibility Parliament should look into. From a strictly personal perspective—and I am not engaging other members of the committee here—I would say that the debates before the courts will eventually be based on the principle of equality. In the Carter decision,

Physician-Assisted Dying committee  That idea of oversight is quite reassuring for the population. The population likes to know that there might be a body or different bodies collecting data and analyzing how physician-assisted dying is provided all across Canada, and maybe doing some study on the impact it has on

Physician-Assisted Dying committee  I think that the federal government should give the provinces considerable leeway to act on this issue, while perhaps legislating on matters such as age, which we discussed earlier. For instance, it could perhaps also legislate on the issue of residence requirements. In fact, if