Thank you, Madam Chair.
Good morning. I hope everyone is well.
My name is Ellen Cohen, and I'm here today as an independent witness willing to share my expertise that is built from my professional and personal experiences.
For over 30 years, I have worked in the mental health consumer sector. I'm a person with mental health challenges and two chronic health conditions, and a family member. I need you to know that there is a lot on the line for me today, and I'm nervous. This is so much larger than all of us. The recommendations that you make to the government can make a big difference for people I support, persons with disabilities and people with mental health conditions living in Canada.
Who is not touched by mental illness? Mental illness affects everyone. People with disabilities make up 22% of the population, and that represents 6.2 million people living in Canada. Among youth aged 15-24 with disabilities, 60% claim to have mental health-related disabilities. All too often, some professionals do not understand that people with intellectual, physical and sensory disabilities can also have mental health conditions that are not related to any disability they may have.
I know that some of the problems where MAID is a major concern for our communities include poverty and lack of food security, safe housing, access to health care, mental health care and addiction services. There is also systemic discrimination—to mention a few.
I was invited onto the panel representing mental health from a disability perspective, which I did. The disability community is diverse, and I know that mental health consumer survivors are divided on the issue of MAID. Despite what was said by Dr. Gupta in her testimony to the members of this committee, I came onto the expert panel with an open mind. As a member of the panel, I was responsible to voice my opinion and to make recommendations for safeguards where mental illness was the sole underlying medical condition in applying for MAID.
Since the beginning of the process, there were challenges, including the composition of the expert panel. It was made up of seven doctors, five or six of whom provided assessments, one palliative care family doctor working with marginalized people, two doctors from the indigenous community, a psychiatric ethicist, two lawyers, two community members from the mental health community, and myself, a member of the disability/mental health community.
From the beginning of the panel, those who were assessors talked about the difficulties they were experiencing with [Technical difficulty—Editor] patients in general. They shared about the complications and difficulties of assessment. Those difficulties were not clear to me, nor were they transparent. The assessors also shared about the amount of time needed for each assessment and talked about the fair compensation for the work that is expected of MAID assessors. There was no space made for meaningful discussions on seriously complicated issues concerning decision-making, consent and capacity, accountability, monitoring, privilege, vulnerability. That just did not happen in the context of people suffering with mental health disorders.
When the discussion of mental illness came up, the discussion was shut down, or we moved on. When suggestions were brought forward, panel members were discouraged due to time constraints. When I did suggest something, I was shamed by the only other peer on the panel, stating that having specific safeguards for those suffering from mental disorders was discrimination.
Under Bill C-7, I believe there's a big difference between people requesting MAID for incurable and disabling conditions and those who are requesting MAID for mental illness as the sole medical condition. I ask you this: Is this a lack of resources or bureaucracy? I believe the outcome of the panel was a foregone conclusion. It became clear that some of the expert panellists had very little appetite to make any attempt at recommendations regarding the addition of legislative safeguards for any amendments to Bill C-7 with regard to mental health disability.
After reading the Quebec decision and giving it some thought, it became obvious to me that there were too many unanswered questions and issues in determining and assessing requests for track two patients without adding to it the request from people with mental illness, which will be available come March 2023, so I left the panel.
Through this whole process, there was limited discussion about mental illness as the sole mental condition for requiring MAID. The process was rushed. Seven months from our first meeting was not enough time to decide about life and death. It was not enough time to consult with the community that Bill C-7 is endangering. I would like to point out that this parliamentary process is also being rushed.
Thank you for allowing me to share my story.