Justice committee  No. There's no requirement for them to do that, and there's only one province that currently requires them to refer someone to a colleague, which is Ontario. Ontario is actually the only jurisdiction in the entire world with that requirement.

Justice committee  That's correct. I would say that particularly on the point of assistance in dying, we've seen the nine provinces, those outside of Quebec, come forward with regulations. All of them, save Ontario, have wording that very clearly protects the conscience rights of physicians, but we

Justice committee  Self-regulation is very much a privilege and not a right of the medical profession. It is something we constantly must strive to uphold through our actions, collectively and individually. As you know, there are members of the public now on these regulatory bodies, and we look t

Justice committee  That is correct. We represent over 83,000 physicians in Canada.

Justice committee  If I may, we've consulted with tens of thousands of physicians over the past two to three years in the course of various national town halls we've conducted across the country. We've done extensive polling, and we've had numerous debates at our national annual meeting. So we do

Justice committee  Thank you, Dr. Forbes, and committee members. As mentioned, I will speak to the CMA's response on the core elements of this legislation. We certainly welcome questions from the committee today and at any time over the course of your important study. First, the CMA's position i

Physician-Assisted Dying committee  It applies only to physicians.

Physician-Assisted Dying committee  They're very clear on our views on this issue, yes.

Physician-Assisted Dying committee  I think that's an approach we would support, yes.

Physician-Assisted Dying committee  I think it's absolutely critical to recognize that 30% represents 24,000 Canadian physicians. I can sit here today in front of this committee and guarantee that simply from a numbers perspective, access will not be an issue. As Dr. Branigan has already indicated, it's about con

Physician-Assisted Dying committee  However, in Quebec it is limited to physicians only.

Physician-Assisted Dying committee  That's a very important issue. This is another one where our interpretation of the Carter decision did not include the ability to provide advance directives. We read it, and our constitutional lawyers read it, to indicate that it applied to someone who was capable at the time of

Physician-Assisted Dying committee  Perhaps I'll try to address that first. It's an excellent point. I think we'd like to see clarification on the need for some sort of a reflective waiting period. I have heard people in discussions say that it really should just be one doctor, and that five minutes after the requ

Physician-Assisted Dying committee  Thank you very much. That's an extremely important question for the profession at the moment. What we had hoped to see as the provinces developed these guidelines was a much higher degree of consistency among the various approaches. There is a national body that represents them,

Physician-Assisted Dying committee  Thank you. It's a very important question, and we do see that as a legislative response, for sure. Very similar to what Dr. Branigan was saying, we've been advocating for safeguards and waiting periods based on the facts of an individual case. There will clearly be differences b