Thank you very much for the opportunity, Madam Chair and Mr. Garrison. Sorry for the technical difficulties.
Perhaps I could just conclude on a couple of points.
Dying with Dignity Canada is concerned about the express exclusion from Bill C-7 of those with mental illness and believes this exclusion to be stigmatizing, discriminatory and likely unconstitutional.
It's worth recalling the words of Justice Baudouin in the Truchon decision. She said:
The vulnerability of a person requesting medical assistance in dying must be assessed exclusively on a case-by-case basis, according to the characteristics of the person and not based on a reference group of so-called “vulnerable persons”.
She went on to say that “the patient’s ability to understand and to consent is ultimately the decisive factor, in addition to the other legal criteria”.
I have one other point, if I may. We strongly believe that the five-year parliamentary review of the MAID legislation and the state of palliative care in Canada, which was scheduled to begin in June 2020, should commence as quickly as possible following the disposition of Bill C-7. More specifically, we expect that the three areas identified for further study in Bill C-14 and addressed in the Council of Canadian Academies report, namely advance requests, mental illness and mature minors, will be considered during that review.
From our perspective, the most pressing of those three areas is the area of advance requests, something that 85% of Canadians support, as confirmed both by our own research and by the government’s consultation. Today, over half a million Canadians live with dementia, and there's no place for them in our current legislation.