I certainly accept that people live with grievous and irremediable conditions that cause them immense suffering. Some of that is motivated by lack of supports, but I know that in many situations that's not the case.
I guess my point this evening is that it's very problematic to move to introduce these authorizations for advance requests, because advance requests are not consent, remember. Someone who is going to be authorizing the death of someone else is a substitute decision-maker. That's the problem here.
When you make an advance request, as the special commission report in Quebec tabled in the National Assembly in December said, yes, advance requests should be made in a free and informed manner, but that's not about consent to something that's going to happen in five years. I think we just have to have our eyes wide open to the reality that we're going to have substitute decision-makers causing the death of another person who has no idea of what's going on. They are not consenting to their death.
You can't consent to the death years in advance, because you don't know the circumstances. Informed consent is all about understanding the circumstances in the current moment. We're crossing the Rubicon—