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The court found this sort of “anecdotal” evidence unpersuasive. These countries, it said, had a very different “medico-legal culture” than ours. In Canada, the “risks” of legalized killing could be limited “through a carefully designed and monitored system of safeguards.”

That was a year ago. The court’s ruling has not yet taken effect, and already we have the report of an all-party joint committee on “physician-assisted dying” recommending legislation that would go far beyond what the court prescribed.

To be sure, the report builds on the court’s foundations. It would apply to both terminal and non-terminal conditions, physical and psychological, debilitating or otherwise. But its definition of a competent adult would not exclude people with mental illnesses — which is to say virtually all current suicides — nor people who had previously expressed the wish to be killed in the event they should later become mentally incompetent. Moreover, after a three-year trial period, it recommends extending the practice to what it calls “mature minors,” a term left undefined.

Not only would “assisted dying” be legalized, under the committee’s recommendation, it would be publicly funded.

Not only would doctors be permitted to kill their patients on request, they would be obliged to, or provide “effective referral” to others who will. And while the committee suggests that those seeking assistance in killing themselves should be required to get two doctors to certify they met the criteria, the criteria are so open-ended it is hard to see in what circumstances they could say no. In any event: the consent of two doctors? Where have we heard that before? What if none are available? How long could it be before the Supreme Court rules on the inequity of denying “access” on these grounds?