Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Thank you to our witnesses for being here tonight.
I was particularly encouraged to hear you, as professionals, openly declare your concerns about some of the subjective nature of the language that is being used—“irremediable”, “intolerable”, “enduring”. I think this underscores for us as committee members the severe nature of this topic that we're dealing with and how important it is for us to deal with it seriously and to move with extreme caution.
Over the last number of years, I've devoted a fair bit of my time to dealing with mental health issues and suicide prevention. I know that since 1991, there have been no fewer than 15 initiatives in Parliament to authorize physician-assisted suicide. All of these have been defeated. Parliament, in fact, in the last couple of years, has strongly supported some suicide prevention initiatives. Currently the Public Health Agency of Canada is undertaking the job of creating a federal framework for suicide prevention, which is a result of the passage of Bill C-300. In fact, today the Bell Let's Talk initiative is all over Twitter. I don't know how many thousands or millions of tweets have gone out.
Society is concerned about continuing their concerted efforts on suicide prevention. For me, then, it's something of a paradox that we have these initiatives to prevent suicide going on in our country and our health agency, yet here we are, looking at ways to give greater access to suicide.
It's quite clear that physician-assisted suicide is an irreversible act. We know from some of the mental health studies that have been done that people go up and down and that people's minds change over time. We also know that depression is by and large a treatable condition, and you pointed out in your testimony, Dr. Gaind, that there are varying degrees of success.
One of my concerns is that in terms of giving access to people who may be suffering with mental health issues or depression, what additional safeguards should this committee be looking at to make sure we are protecting some of our most vulnerable at the most vulnerable times in their lives?