Justice committee  Absolutely not.

Justice committee  It would certainly improve it substantially, but in order to ensure its constitutionality, I would remove the entire definition, because it undermines the clear definition, the clear declaration in the Carter decision. The reference to “incurable” is problematic. The reference to

Justice committee  I can't.

Justice committee  Obviously I have no idea who is advising the government and what's motivating the government, but to be very candid about this, I'm dismayed that I have to be here. We fought a very long, hard, expensive battle on this issue, and we were successful. For reasons that just baffle m

Justice committee  I don't really have much of a comment on that point. I'm sorry.

Justice committee  Yes.

Justice committee  I agree with that.

Justice committee  It would be a perverse outcome not only of Carter but of this bill. This person Tony Nicklinson who I mentioned, actually brought his own case in England, and he was unsuccessful there. He ended up starving himself to death. As anybody who knows anything about starving yourself t

Justice committee  I do.

Justice committee  The answer is no. First of all, it's interesting that although the trial judge in the Carter case used language that was somewhat similar to “an advanced state of irreversible decline”, she used the language to say that the person had to be in an advanced state of weakening cap

Justice committee  It should be gone anyway, but obviously, if I had to choose between the reasonable foreseeability clause and the “advanced state of irreversible decline” clause, I definitely want you to get rid of the reasonable foreseeability clause. If the advanced state of irreversible declin

Justice committee  It's just “Mr.” Arvay.

Justice committee  Mr. Nicholson, I appreciate the question, and quite frankly, those portions of the bill are not something I've put my mind to. I've come here to deal with the definition of “grievous and irremediable”.

Justice committee  Yes, I appreciate that. I can say this, though. Certainly when we argued the Carter case, it was our position that no doctor should be forced to provide physician-assisted dying, and the Supreme Court of Canada accepted that. Beyond that I'm not prepared to answer that questio

Justice committee  Thank you, Mr. Chair and members of the committee, for allowing me to appear before you today. As the chair indicated, I was the lead counsel in Carter. In that context, I think I probably know better than anybody what this case is about and what it stands for, because I was inv