ST. JOHN’S, N.L. – A man who was seeking Newfoundland and Labrador’s first legal assisted death will likely get his wish within the next month, his lawyer said Wednesday.

Lawyer Kyle Rees had made a court application for an unidentified client who has suffered from prostate cancer for a number of years.

Rees said a hearing was held last week on the matter, but the application was withdrawn on Wednesday because the man’s physician was satisfied that he meets the requirements of Bill C-14, passed on Friday.

He said the court agreed that with the new federal legislation, there was no need for the court application to proceed.

“We were all surprised… that the legislation passed when it did, but hopefully this will give other individuals like my client the access to the procedure they need to end their suffering,” said Rees in a phone interview.

Rees said he expected that his client, who is over the age of 65, would be granted an assisted death within the next month.

The man is in great pain and has exhausted all avenues of potential treatment including palliative care, Rees has said.

Bill C-14 limits the right to assisted dying to those whose natural death is “reasonably foreseeable.”

Non-terminally ill Canadians have had the right to an assisted death since February, when the Supreme Court gave the government an additional four months to craft a new law in response to its landmark Carter decision a year earlier that struck down the ban on assisted dying.

In the interim, the court allowed those who met the eligibility criteria laid out in Carter to seek judicial approval for medical help in ending their lives.

In Carter, the Supreme Court directed that medical assistance in dying should be available to clearly consenting, competent adults with “grievous and irremediable” medical conditions that are causing enduring suffering that they find intolerable.

But the Trudeau government has taken a much more restrictive approach in C-14, which allows assisted dying only for consenting adults “in an advanced stage of irreversible decline” from a serious and “incurable” disease, illness or disability.