Because the time is so limited, let me ask a question on another topic.
Today's Globe and Mail has an article by UBC professor of medicine Dr. Jesse Pewarchuk, who talks about the issue that I also wanted to raise, that of advance requests, or so-called advance directives, which, as you know, is something that was recommended by the Senate-House committee. Dr. Pewarchuk writes as follows:
Bill C-14’s biggest flaw is that it forces the hand of those who have a progressive disease that relentlessly and predictably results in lost mental capacity to consent. Alzheimer’s patients can expect, with virtual certainty, to lose the capacity to make medical decisions over time.
He claims that “the wording of the proposed law introduces...doubt as to whether an Alzheimer’s patient who has yet to lose capacity (yet is certain to) would even be eligible, since death can take years...”. He says that “foreseeable death” and “advanced state of decline in capability”, the phrases in the definition in the bill, “are loaded, ambiguous clauses that seem to eliminate the Charter rights of dementia patients to be eligible...”.
Would you consider advance directives to address that problem?