Dr. Louise Campbell:

I would like to go back to the Senator's question on the shift in societal mores because Deputy Daly addressed this issue as well. I was quite interested in the subject. I went to the Netherlands in 2018 to talk to various stakeholders about assisted dying to see what was going on there. It is the most transparent system in the world, without any shadow of a doubt. I am not saying it is infallible or that abuses do not happen but it is extremely transparent regarding documentation, review, reporting and all of those kinds of procedural safeguards. I spoke to two people. One had been an advocate of euthanasia and a member of the regional euthanasia review committees for ten years. The other was a current advocate of euthanasia. Both of them told me, independently of one another, that there had been a shift in societal mores since the legalisation of euthanasia in 2002 in the Netherlands. The current advocate of euthanasia said that euthanasia in the Netherlands had always been an intervention of last resort. It has been intended specifically to operate on compassionate grounds when no alternative was available to relieve the person's suffering.