The Medical Director for the Palliative Care Program in Southern Health-Santé Sud says physician assisted death is not the way to go.

Dr. Cornelius Woelk made that comment after the Liberal government Thursday introduced new legislation, spelling out conditions for when dying Canadians can get medical assistance to end

(Dr. Cornelius Woelk)their lives. The legislation says medically assisted death should be an option for adults suffering intolerably and where death is reasonably foreseeable. It also says they must be 18 years or older and mentally competent.

Dr. Woelk says the legislation is actually more restrictive than what the Supreme Court of Canada had suggested. The Court ordered legislation, giving a June 6 deadline.

"I've been open and public about the fact that I think it's not a good way to go," says Dr. Woelk. "There are so many things that we can do to try to make peoples' lives better and I don't think we've exhausted those to go to a system where everyone should have access to have their life ended earlier."

Dr. Woelk says he would back anyone who says we need to have improved palliative care services. He adds we need to have good pain management and good symptom management.

"I think that we definitely need to understand that when people say that they wish to have their life ended, they're suffering at some level or other and we need to some how figure out how to address that," he says.

According to Dr. Woelk, studies suggest that people who request to have their lives ended and then get really good palliative care, usually change their minds.

"It seems to suggest that if we provide better palliative care that there will be less requests," notes Dr. Woelk. "That doesn't necessarily mean that there will be no requests, but that they will be less."

Dr. Woelk says palliative care does not include ending someone's life premature at their request. He notes palliative care is about helping people get the best quality of life in a dignified way.

"It's not about lengthening or shortening, it's about quality." he says.

Dr. Woelk says only a few times over the last decade, has a patient in the region asked him if they could rather die.

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