Justice committee  I think at first blush it seems pretty obvious that it's age discrimination to say that those over 18 are in, and those under 18 are out. But the real point and question—which is why it should give us all pause and why additional study is a good idea—is are the young especially

Justice committee  The judicial role at the moment is an interim solution from the court. They are expecting Parliament to come up with a system of safeguards. They said that they thought the judges were part of the rule of law, part of the safeguard system. I think they're leaving it open to Parli

Justice committee  Yes.

Justice committee  I think suggestions have been made about saying, well, nobody shall be coerced to perform medically assisted dying or participate in it. I think you could put that in the criminal law, but my sense is that this is not the real concern. The real concern isn't coercion in the sense

Justice committee  I would say it's both section 7 and section 15. The Carter claim itself was about section 15 and section 7, and Justice Smith started with section 15, and 7 was a bit of an afterthought. The Supreme Court of Canada said yes to section 7 therefore we don't need to deal with 15. S

Justice committee  I don't think it's a very apt analogy. What I said was that the courts left out a large part of the analysis not because they're incompetent—obviously, they're not—but because they were not dealing with everything, on the theory that it was up to Parliament to deal with stuff. To

Justice committee  Yes. The whole point of the principles of fundamental justice, the overbreadth, is to say that an absolute ban was going too far. The question is then, what wouldn't be going too far? It is a balancing exercise. It's up to Parliament to try to figure out what the appropriate bala

Justice committee  Okay.

Justice committee  I understand.

Justice committee  Thank you. I'm told I have two minutes, so I'll have to be brutal about what I talked about. Before the vote, I was saying that the point of the decision in Carter v. Canada was to say that if the risk of error or abuse is low, then the autonomy claims can prevail, but the obver

Justice committee  That's my plan.

Justice committee  Thank you. I appreciate the opportunity to be here. My expertise is in constitutional law, including charter law. So that's where I'm coming from. Given the limited time, I'm focusing on the constitutional validity of the definition of grievous and irremediable medical condition