The issue of voluntariness is an important one.
To answer your question, I've spoken with and interviewed physicians involved in each of the three known MAID cases. Certainly, the questioning by the assessors and the providers of the necessity of having guards, for example, or Correctional Services officers in the room did come up. I know that, in at least one case, a hospital ethics person was brought in to be present in the room to make sure that there was an extra level of eyes to ensure that the voluntariness was protected.
Similar to why we would keep people in prison if they can't hurt anyone anymore and they're dying, in the same vein, if someone is incapable of harming himself or someone else, probably those few moments of privacy are essential, and these have happened during assessments.
When I think about the three cases, assessments were done both within the prison system and after a transfer to community hospital. To answer your question, the process is that first the chief health services officer reviews the request for an assessment. The guidelines say that ideally a physician internal to CSC would be the first person to provide an assessment. If it has to be external, it goes external. The second, and sometimes the first and the second, is always external to Correctional Services.
Does that answer your question?