Physician-Assisted Dying committee  Thank you, Jennifer. Again, thank you very much for asking us to be here. I think all of you have the slide deck that was just handed out. The nub of it is on page 6, really, with regard to priorities to raise with the federal government. Jennifer and I will address a couple of

Physician-Assisted Dying committee  Those are the highlights, but obviously, we're here to answer your questions on anything else as well. Thank you.

Physician-Assisted Dying committee  Thank you for the question. I'll be very blunt. Of course there needs to be better palliative care. There needs to be better access to palliative care. I sometimes think we overstate the lack of palliative care. I was watching some of your panellists from earlier in the week,

Physician-Assisted Dying committee  Yes, there's a lack of strategy. There's a lack of resources, no question.

Physician-Assisted Dying committee  I'm sorry, but what are we leaving in the hands of physicians?

Physician-Assisted Dying committee  Two physicians is what we said, and the eligibility is the Carter decision: a patient has to be diagnosed with a “grievous and irremediable” condition. Physicians make these decisions with their patients every day. Yes, every day physicians are talking to their patients about whe

Physician-Assisted Dying committee  We don't want you to narrow it. “Irremediable” has already been defined in Carter, because they said the patient does not have to try therapies that are not acceptable to the patient. That's done. For “grievous”, we're saying “very severe or serious”.

Physician-Assisted Dying committee  We say in our report that there are provinces that already have ways of evaluating. When a physician is worried about a patient's competency, they seek other expert opinion. They send the patient on. Where there is a disagreement between the patient and the physician, Ontario has

Physician-Assisted Dying committee  Depending on the province you're from.... I'm from Ontario, so I use advance directive. You're going to hear in a couple of days from Jocelyn Downie, who is a health law expert, and we'll defer some of the legalese to her. She felt very strongly that this is not a consistently

Physician-Assisted Dying committee  I'll let the bioethicist take that.

Physician-Assisted Dying committee  We do not, for the purposes being considered for this. Where I think we felt there could be leeway—you've talked about waiting periods, cooling-off periods, and whether patients should require a psychiatric evaluation. We definitely don't feel every patient who asks for this need

Physician-Assisted Dying committee  Yes.

Physician-Assisted Dying committee  Thank you.

Physician-Assisted Dying committee  I'm not a legal expert, but I have a feeling that this is going to be seen as something that the provinces will say they have jurisdiction over. That's what we were told by the Attorney General. I will say that I love that you're thinking along those lines, because, again, we do

Physician-Assisted Dying committee  My personal opinion is that I don't like “suicide” with this. Yesterday, I think, you were talking about how Health Canada has a campaign to prevent suicide. That is precisely why I don't think suicide belongs in this discussion. I think that's a different issue. As for “euthana