MONTREAL—Landmark Quebec legislation that would let terminally ill patients end their lives has received a troubling diagnosis at a key phase before it can be passed into law.

Quebec Liberal Leader Philippe Couillard, a former neurosurgeon, says the Parti Québécois government’s euthanasia bill as it stands now doesn’t set sufficiently strict conditions that must be met before terminally-ill patients can ask to be euthanized by a doctor.

The Quebec debate is being watched closely across Canada, particularly after a British Columbia Appeals Court ruling earlier this month supported a federal ban on doctor-assisted suicide. Those in favour of such measures received a posthumous boost from Toronto epidemiologist Dr. Donald Lowe, who recorded his wish to change the laws a few days before he died of cancer.

But opponents say such a law is a slippery slope that could permit people to end their lives for more frivolous reasons than lawmakers originally intended.

Quebec’s political parties have until now shown broad support for enacting a new law that would allow terminally-ill adults to end their lives if they are suffering greatly and have exhausted all other medical treatments.

But Couillard said Tuesday that his party is evenly split on whether to adopt the bill and his two decades of experience leave him personally unable to back the legislation as it now stands.

“If I had a terminal disease that would make me suffer for years, am I already in the ‘end of life’ stage? Can I say one day, ‘I’ve had enough and I want someone to inject me with something to die?’ ” he asked Tuesday at a news conference in Quebec City.

“The importance of the legislative process is to make things more precise and comprehensible and to know what we’re talking about, how we’re talking about it and what types of acts we’re talking about.”

He said that in his experience there are very few cases in the dying days of a terminally ill patient where pain and suffering cannot be alleviated by doctors and drugs.

“I understand that there can be situations that are truly exceptional. But I would like them to be more precise about what those situations are.”

Québec Solidaire’s Amir Khadir, a member of the national assembly and a doctor, said the bill as it stands is a “good synthesis” the prevailing opinions in the province, both of the population and the medical community.

“We have to be able to give a human and dignified response to the question of end-of-life suffering in the most (serious) diseases for which there is no cure,” he said, adding that the bill proposes a rigorous framework.

The legislation was passed in principle with an 84-26 vote in the national assembly Tuesday and will now proceed to its final stage where the PQ government and opposition parties can propose amendments before submitting the bill to a final vote.

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