Medical Assistance in Dying committee  Thank you for the question. I should say that we were not mandated to discuss the rationale for legalization. Jersey put forward two options for legalization. One was a terminal illness diagnosis, kind of styled track one but narrower than in the Canadian context. The second one

Medical Assistance in Dying committee  I think people have to realize that the fundamental difference between the Canadian system and Belgium and the Netherlands is that we don't even have an obligation that physicians have to agree that all reasonable treatment options are fulfilled. People are saying, oh, there will

Medical Assistance in Dying committee  I think this is very well established by leading constitutional scholars. I would even refer to the statements by the late Professor Hogg, who explicitly changed his opinion. He indicated, in a more recent publication, that Parliament was given leeway to develop a detailed regula

Medical Assistance in Dying committee  I fundamentally disagree, and I'm not the only one who disagrees with that. I think many legal scholars and many people in the legal profession disagree. I think it reflects a distorted view of MAID as a quasi inherently beneficial practice, as if not having facilitated access wi

Medical Assistance in Dying committee  I urge parliamentary committee members to look at the submissions they received. We submitted something. I think there is nothing in Carter, certainly not in Carter, that explicitly states that we have to legalize it. In fact, the Supreme Court explicitly excluded mental illnes

Medical Assistance in Dying committee  In my view, there are not. I think the safeguards that we have are easily circumvented. They are already circumvented in the context of track two. I would urge committee members to watch, for example, the recent documentary by Al Jazeera, where we see Rosina Kamis receiving MAID

Medical Assistance in Dying committee  Good evening, chairs and members of the committee. Parliament's core obligation is to protect the life and promote the well-being of Canadians. Expanding MAID to include it for reasons of mental illness is an unprecedented threat to that. It appears driven by, one, a flawed clai

Medical Assistance in Dying committee  Thank you for giving me the opportunity to respond, contrary to what Senator Wallin did. She basically questioned my integrity. I have studied what's happening in the Netherlands, and the practice they described is actually the reason there are more physicians in the Netherland

Medical Assistance in Dying committee  I would first of all say that the procedural tools you find in the Council of Canadian Academies' report focus on issues of communication, even at the level of guaranteeing that persons are respected in their future choices when they are no longer the same person or have the same

Medical Assistance in Dying committee  Yes. I'd say the experience of the Netherlands and Belgium shows that advance requests for medical assistance in dying create insurmountable ethical and legal concerns. Furthermore, the practice in the Netherlands sometimes involves the involuntary administration of medication to

Medical Assistance in Dying committee  Yes. It creates more problems. There are other approaches to providing assistance to those persons.

Medical Assistance in Dying committee  For…

Medical Assistance in Dying committee  Yes. We should prioritize health care and social support that promotes the human rights of all, including those with cognitive disabilities. I thank you for my time.

Medical Assistance in Dying committee  I thank the committee for the invitation. I was, as professor of law and bioethics, a member of the Council of Canadian Academies' expert panel on advance requests for MAID. I have studied MAID and euthanasia law and practice, particularly also in the Belgian and Dutch regimes.

Justice committee  I would agree with that. The best protection is indeed strict criteria, so I think the biggest concern that people would have with open criteria and situations where you could have a 16 or 17-year-old suffering from depression, which is not uncommon.... Having an 18-year-old my