Thank you.
Good morning. My name is Christie Duncan. I am here today with my sister Alicia to share our family’s experience regarding medical assistance in dying.
While we are not philosophically opposed to MAID, our concern is that the current legislation is written in such a way that many Canadians are accessing MAID out of desperation and not dignity, as it was originally intended.
Our mother, Donna Duncan, chose to end her life through MAID on October 29, 2021. This was hours after being released from a psychiatric unit for a suicide attempt 72 hours earlier. Today we will focus on the facts that we've uncovered through her medical records and the police investigation we initiated into whether the safeguards for MAID were followed before she was given a lethal injection.
In February of 2020, as a result of a minor car accident, our mother was diagnosed with post-concussion syndrome by her general practitioner of more than 20 years. However, due in part to the global pandemic, she was not able to access immediate counselling and physical rehabilitation.
As her symptoms worsened, she was referred to a complex chronic disease clinic with a wait-list over a year long. During this time, her sensitivity to touch, sight and smell worsened. She claimed that she felt pain when eating, which led to her refusal to eat most foods, and as a result, she lost a significant amount of weight.
On October 14, 2021, she asked her GP to assess her for MAID, but he refused, as he did not feel that she had followed his medical recommendations and he did not believe she was on a trajectory for death. On October 24, 2021, our mother had her initial assessment for MAID by Dr. Grace Park and, two days later, by Sean Young, a nurse practitioner, who approved her to die 48 hours later after meeting her only once.
How did the opinion of someone who had been caring for my mother for over 20 years carry less weight than the opinion of two people who had just met her and simply ticked off boxes in a MAID assessment form?
Upon her approval, my sister and I were able to delay her death through the courts, as her mental health was in question. Following this, she was further assessed by several psychiatrists, who all documented that they believed the decision for MAID was being made in haste, but there was nothing they could legally do to prevent her from accessing it as she was found to be of sound mind. Our mother had been a psychiatric nurse her entire career, and our family believes that she manipulated the psychiatrists because she knew what answers to provide.
As of today, we have been denied access to our mother’s documents related to her MAID death, despite the fact that my sister is the executor of my mother’s estate. As such, we have been unable to confirm which track our mother applied for and was approved for, and therefore which safeguards were followed or violated.
I will turn to Alicia.