Huffington Post:

A landmark report in Quebec recommends that doctors be allowed in exceptional circumstances to help the terminally ill die if that is what the patients want.

The report was released in the legislature on Thursday after two years of work from the so-called Dying With Dignity Committee, a multi-partisan group of MNAs.

The report focuses mainly on improving palliative care but the argument for opening the door to euthanasia — albeit in some very exceptional cases — could trigger a national debate again in Canada on the controversial issue.

The report opens the door to euthanasia, which is specifically called medically assisted death.

But the committee opposes assisted suicide, which consists of helping someone die when he or she hasn’t arrived at the end of life.

“Our mandate was to look at the conditions at the end of life, so we felt that it (assisted suicide) was away from our mandate,” said Veronique Hivon, a Parti Quebecois member and co-president of the committee. Read more