With regard to the impact on patients, I would encourage the committee to watch a documentary by Marc de Guerre, who talked to two people who, after the documentary, ended their lives by suicide because of the extension. They had been waiting, and they said, “We cannot wait anymore.”
What will happen if there is an extension or an exclusion is that people will die by suicide. They will go to Switzerland because they can access it there, or they will not get MAID in either way and will continue to experience enduring and intolerable suffering caused by a serious and incurable disease. They just have to have that suffering.
The consequences for the government are to end up in court. That's what keeps happening. We had to go to court to get Carter. That gave us something. It was shrunk by Parliament, so we had to go to court on Truchon to get it back out to Carter. Then Bill C-7 came along and took it away, and we had to go back out to....
You need governments to have courage and a recognition of their obligation to respect the charter. That's what the government did the last time with respect to not appealing Truchon. It spoke about it.