Physician-Assisted Dying committee  They're organizational in that we had six days to pull this together. It has been to the executive of the CPS. We decided to stick to the overarching themes that we wanted to get across, about which we thought there would be consensus, and what we want to be clear about is there

Physician-Assisted Dying committee  That's a personal opinion, but I think I can also speak on behalf of the CPS. That is exactly what we're saying. It's absolutely premature that we would expect that children should be able to ask to end their lives when we have completely inadequate national palliative care servi

Physician-Assisted Dying committee  I think for the purposes of your legislation, I would say 18 is an adult. I would be as conservative as you can possibly be.

Physician-Assisted Dying committee  I'll start. I don't think it was my piece of the submission, and we didn't mean to be misleading or confusing in any way. Suffice to say that the Canadian Paediatric Society has not had any discussion about this as a group yet in that the provincial and territorial findings were

Physician-Assisted Dying committee  Okay, I'll give you the example of chemotherapy. Explaining the chemotherapy, what's entailed, what will be happening to the child, is proportional to how much the child wants to hear, how much the child wants to give over to the parents—

Physician-Assisted Dying committee  I think that would be an hour-long lecture unto itself. The difference between euthanasia and assisted dying is completely different from withdrawing treatments, medically provided treatments, that can confer no benefit to a child. All I can say is that ethically and legally, t

Physician-Assisted Dying committee  Yes, that's my understanding.

Physician-Assisted Dying committee  As far as it concerns children, I'm not aware of any consultation with any child advocacy group, any child protective service, or the Canadian Paediatric Society. Mary, is there anything that you can add?

Physician-Assisted Dying committee  No.

Physician-Assisted Dying committee  We had a case where it was a catastrophic accident. The teen in question was 17 years of age, so he qualified as a child at the beginning of the illness. Without saying too much more for the sake of confidentiality, a decision was made to treat that child in the immediate time af

Physician-Assisted Dying committee  Basically, in assessing the capacity of a minor person, we are trying to establish that they can have a full understanding of the information, and that they can process all the different alternatives available to them and make a decision that is reproducible if we have the same c

Physician-Assisted Dying committee  I don't think there is any consensus. Even across provincial jurisdictions, the age of consent varies greatly, from 14 to 18. I think capacity really comes down to the individual patient, with the individual question that's being asked of them. In general, the less weighty the

Physician-Assisted Dying committee  Hi, I'm Dawn Davies. I'm a palliative care physician at the Stollery Children's Hospital in Alberta. I'm here today as a representative of the Canadian Paediatric Society, where I'm the current chair of the bioethics committee. Thanks for giving the CPS an opportunity to address