Thank you, Chair.
Dr. Zinger, one of my other committees is the Special Joint Committee on Medical Assistance in Dying. We are going to be releasing our final report next week. We had a witness, Dr. Jessica Shaw, who appeared before our committee to talk about MAID in prisons. I want to quote from her testimony. She said:
Well, what we informally call compassionate release is actually called parole by exception, and being granted parole by exception in Canada is exceedingly rare. In two of the three known MAID cases for patients in CSC custody, the prisoners had applied for and been denied parole. The third prisoner didn't apply. Apparently he knew that his prospects for release were minimal, even considering his advanced stages of illness.
She went on to say:
Canada is the only jurisdiction in the world where assisted dying is legal who does have specific guidelines about how it ought to be implemented for prisoners.
I don't have a lot of time here. What would you like to see in those guidelines? I want you to expand a bit, because this is obviously a pressing issue.
Could you also maybe talk about track 2? That's for people who do not have a naturally foreseeable death but are suffering from a grievous and irremediable condition.
Do you know much about that population in Canada's federal institutions?