Thank you for the question.
I think I'll echo some of the comments made by Dr. Chung. It's one of the great uncertainties. I will direct members of the committee back to the CCA report, where we discuss in detail what needs and supports the substitute decision-makers and proxy decision-makers will need. We will not have a regimen like the one in the Netherlands, where the physician is the one who makes the assessment of the intolerable suffering and triggers the request for medical assistance in death. In Canada, it would have to come through the substitute decision-maker.
As I mentioned in my comments, we have done precious little through time to support substitute decision-makers and proxy decision-makers in making decisions in day-to-day care, let alone the weighty responsibility that it will be to trigger the initiation of medical assistance in death. We have a lot of work to do, and like many of the questions here.... Let's not wring our hands about how complex they are. Let's mobilize research resources and get answers to these questions so that we can...not eliminate the uncertainty, but actually close some of those uncertainties.
I would charge you, as a parliamentary committee, to direct the CIHR to invest resources in closing these knowledge gaps. They're considerable, and they're important. So long as there's a huge amount of uncertainty, there's going to be hand-wringing and anxiety. We need not suffer that when we're making decisions about medical assistance in death if we have the means and mechanisms to close those knowledge gaps.
Thank you.