Thank you for giving me the opportunity to respond, contrary to what Senator Wallin did. She basically questioned my integrity.
I have studied what's happening in the Netherlands, and the practice they described is actually the reason there are more physicians in the Netherlands who are now opposed to medical assistance in dying for persons with dementia than there were before. Contrary to what Maître Chalifoux says, the Netherlands actually did not have the practice of advance requests for MAID in the first years of its legalization. It took many years to start implementing it, and it has become, and remains, more problematic precisely because of the things I described.
Most physicians are now reluctant because of the uncertainty and what it involves. In other words, my message is that we're sending false hope to people that they will actually easily have an implementation of an advance request, because we do not know how the disease will evolve. Four out of 16 cases that the Council of Canadian Academies expert panel studied—so we're not talking about the broad practice that was implemented—involved patients with questionable capacity who received MAID. In those cases, the review committees, which do much more detailed work than we have currently done in Canada, judged that the due care criteria were not respected, so they had questions about the practice.
I'm simply stating the facts, and I find it problematic that a senator questions my integrity when I studied this honestly and with professionalism, and I have come here as an expert to convey what's happening in the Netherlands and what legal scholars and ethics scholars have again recently discussed. This is the dilemma that we face. We will have to surreptitiously medicate people. We will have to deprive them of their ability to express a current wish in order to facilitate the ending of life.
I'm actually very disturbed that a senator makes it difficult for witnesses to talk and to convey the knowledge that they have about practices in other jurisdictions. I find it very inappropriate. We are here in a parliamentary democracy. You invite experts to come and talk about what they know, and you treat them like this. I think it's inappropriate.
I apologize, Mr. Chair and Madam Chair, for saying this here, but I am very disturbed by this.