For me, that part of your mandate is why I asked to be a witness at this committee. I strongly believe that, as a nation, we're not protecting disabled people at the moment. I strongly believe that you cannot advance with the expansion of MAID until we've dealt with some of those issues.
For example, 7% of the people living in our long-term care facilities are younger disabled people who have no other option but to live there. I can tell you that they don't want to be there. Of course, the person I talked about, Sean, who passed away through MAID before Bill C-7, did not want to be there either, and he chose MAID over living in long-term care. That tells me that we are not protecting these people.
This is a real concern to me as someone with MS and someone who advocates for the MS Society, as well as Disability Without Poverty. We're not providing these basic societal conditions so that disabled people are able to have a choice about their futures. An institutional life somewhere that is designed for 85-year-olds with dementia when you're in your thirties or your forties—and, as Mr. Adair talked about, you're often in this rehab phase where your situation is new to you—is crushing. On top of that, you're going to be living in poverty.
Here in B.C., in our long-term care homes, the average amount of care a day is 3.28 hours. That's not per person, that's an average. If there's somebody in the facility who needs more time, such as that person with severe dementia who needs time, they are not getting those 3.28 hours. They're getting substantially less.
For people with MS, fatigue needs and so on... I know many people for whom the fear of long-term care would...they would prefer to choose to be eligible for MAID, and it seems that the eligibility is happening at the moment.