I would respond to an individual who might make a well-informed decision to access MAID.
I'm 27 and I'm disabled. Most of my classmates don't have disabilities, and they don't have access to MAID because they don't have disabilities. I have access to it, and they don't. What is the equal access there? That doesn't really make sense to me.
However, the problem here is not the individual. It's not about one person making a decision. It's about the collective impacts. If one person is making a decision about MAID, as was the case with Jean Truchon, it's an individual choice and an individual response to a situation of social harms. For them it might be the worst possible situation.
I have been supporting people who have experienced suicidal ideation since I was 16, and I can assure you that people can make that decision and do make that decision. I have had so many disabled friends who have died by suicide, and I don't think I look at them badly for dying, but I am here to say we don't need help with that. We have access to that. We're dying en masse and we don't need that support. That's not what equal access to programs looks like. Equal access to programs would look like access to supports for the living community, not access to supports for dying.
I was a little bit confused by that question, because you said in your introduction the intention about there not being equal access to programs. We have special access to this one program only. The rest of systems in society we don't have equal access to.
We still have a segregated education system. People are unable to graduate from high school with a diploma. How is that equal access? Do you care about that equal access?
I'm not—