Thank you very much, Madam Joint Chair.
I too, following other committee members, would like to thank our witnesses for helping guide the committee through this very important study.
Professor Smith, maybe I'll start with you. The report we have been discussing has noted that the presence of many of the mental disorders has been strongly correlated with certain social, economic and environmental inequalities, such as poverty, unemployment and homelessness. In my own riding of Cowichan—Malahat—Langford, we are going through some really bad effects of the opioid crisis. A lot of people are suffering through a lot of trauma.
In your opening statement you did state that with respect to vulnerable people, but I'd still like you to expand a little bit, because I do see on the streets of my riding in my home communities a lot of people who are obviously suffering from mental disorders and a lot of internal anguish. As a committee, we just want to know whether those inequalities that we see might ever influence a person with a mental illness to make a request for medical assistance in dying. I'm just worried that there is such an inequitable access to proper services for so many people out there.