Federal government to receive report on physician-assisted dying Thursday
Posted Feb 25, 2016 06:39:41 AM.
This article is more than 5 years old.
OTTAWA – The federal government will receive a report on Thursday advising it of the best route forward when it comes to the issue of physician-assisted dying.
A special parliamentary committee will table its report when the House of Commons begins to sit on Thursday.
Chair of the Committee, Liberal Rob Oliphant, wouldn’t discuss the details but tells News 95.7, there was a lot of work that went in to the coming report.
“We compressed what would normally take a parliamentary committee about four months to do in to one month. The toil on us as individuals was high, but the work never felt rushed,” Oliphant said.
The report by the committee, which heard from 61 witnesses and had over 120 briefings, is likely to offer advice to the government on matters such as age of consent and how physicians can opt-out.
It would also advise of a system that a would-be patient would need to go through to end their life with the help of a doctor.
The Supreme Court struck down Canada’s laws against physician-assisted death over a year ago and gave the government until June to prepare and pass new legislation.
