You're quite correct. It was the special joint committee that recommended advance directives that could lead to physician-assisted dying. Now, to me, the issue always comes back to patient autonomy or, in other words, our ability to make meaningful decisions over how we live our life and how we die. I see no reason why, simply because I happen to become demented, I should lose my ability to have an advance directive to choose not to live in a state that I know is coming down the line in a number of years. I would encourage members to visit any ward that houses demented people to see how horrible a situation that is for the individual, in spite of the best possible care.
I think there's a strong appeal there for Canadians, many of whom are going to die from dementia. It's estimated that there are going to be a million people suffering from dementia.
I for one, and family members and many of the people I know, do not want to live in that state. We need a pathway to get from where we are now so that we can make decisions later on. We do this with wills. We do this with advance directives. There are many ways of allowing Canadians to have a say in what's going to happen to their lives when they become old and demented.
The risk of not doing something is this, in that absent from these discussions is what has happened in Switzerland. In Switzerland, you can have physician-assisted dying. In fact, Kay Carter, the person referenced in the Supreme Court case, died in Switzerland. The risk is that what we're going to be doing is leaving a two-tiered system, whereby those Canadians who have means are going to be able to fly to Switzerland and receive medical aid in dying, and those who are impoverished or of modest means are not going to be able to do that. That's another dimension that I think parliamentarians need to seriously consider in this weighty matter.