Professor Mary Donnelly:

The Canadian issue has arisen because of this concern. It was because of advocacy undertaken by a particular individual and group in the context where people were saying they wanted to live longer and wanted to get the most out of their lives. I assume that if one is choosing to avail of assisted dying, one does not want to have to go early. That would be completely contrary to the whole idea. People were concerned that there was a risk they would lose capacity. The length of time between the initial request and the second request is important in this regard as well because the longer that time is, the greater the risk of losing capacity.

The short answer to the Senator's question is I do not know. If it became a sufficient problem, it might need to be addressed. I should say I am only aware of this mechanism in Canada and it does strike me as qualitatively different from the bigger question of whether we have advance refusals in this context. Again, the Canadian context is based on individual data. I will be watching and waiting to see what happens in this space. There is possibly something here that we do need to be concerned about but we must examine the data, which are absolutely essential.

It is wonderful that the committee is going to hear from international experts who have this experience. They will be able to talk to their expertise in this regard. It just struck me that if we did introduce assisted dying, it would be important for people to be facilitated to live for as long as they choose and not to be pushed into exercising assisted dying sooner than they would choose. This was why I wanted to bring this point up.