Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Ms. Close, your remarks were very compelling. You said that the job of lawmakers is to set legislative guidelines, but also to take a more holistic view. That means talking about the suffering people with mental illnesses are experiencing.
I'll never forget a schizophrenia client I had. They would come to see me and ask whether they could receive MAID. They experienced visual and auditory hallucinations and paranoid thoughts, and despite 25 years of treatment and medication, they couldn't live without suffering. For a variety of reasons, they couldn't see a future for themselves. They genuinely wanted to consent to an assisted death, but that isn't possible yet.
Don't you think it is also up to those practising the profession to examine and define suffering? Work in Canada to establish those guidelines is advancing slowly, but here, around the table, we aren't talking much about suffering. Even with professional support, some people continue to suffer and just can't do it anymore. Do you think we aren't focusing enough on the suffering dimension in this evening's debate?