Danielle McCann, Quebec's health minister, announced Nov. 29 that there will be a consultation on expanding existing criteria. The proposed expansion would allow euthanization of people with Alzheimer's disease and other degenerative conditions.
Véronique Hivon, a member of the Quebec legislature of the Pari Quebecois, took part in the Nov. 29 press conference.
Hivon introduced the province's existing euthanasia law, and said that the criteria adopted then were necessary for its passage: "We didn't want to lose the consensus. We had to listen to what people had to say."
iPolitics wrote that Hivon "added that it should be possible to expand the option of medical assistance to die, for those not apt to make that decision, because a third person would be charged with following through on the wishes of the dying patient."
Euthanasia and assisted suicide were legalized federally in Canada in June 2016. The carrying out of the practices have led to questions over the imprecision of the country's requirements, from family of patients, disability advocates, pro-life groups, and bioethicists.
Eligibility is restricted to mentally competent Canadian adults who have a serious, irreversible illness, disease, or disability. While to be eligible a patient does not have to have a fatal condition, they must meet a criterion variously expressed as they "can expect to die in the near future", that natural death is "reasonably foreseeable" in the "not too distant" future, or that they are "declining towards death".