Thank you, Mr. Chair, and thank you to all of the panellists for coming in.
I have a number of questions, and I'll start off with Mr. Schutten.
In your submission, you indicated that you'd like to have removal of the words “or psychological influence”, and add to the subsection 241.2(2), the following: “(e) a mental illness or psychiatric disorder is not a grievous or irremediable medical conditional for the purposes of this section.”
The rationale is that you say psychological suffering on its own cannot qualify a person for euthanasia, assisted suicide. My question has to deal with the actual subsection. The illness, as I understand, is illness, disease, or disability, or that state of decline causing the person undue physical or psychological suffering. My reading of it is that the psychological suffering is emanating from the underlying disease, illness, or disability.
Do you have a comment on that? In other words, is the psychological suffering in my readings not occurring on its own?