Health committee  The last point I'll make is that, in fact, in CAMAP guidance they have a document that goes through how you can essentially convert people from track two to track one, literally saying that examples might include stated declarations to refuse antibiotic treatment of current or future serious infections.

Health committee  I actually find those kinds of statements, coming from some people who were in positions to actually suggest potential legislative safeguards, quite remarkable, because while Dr. Gupta said that, she also chaired the same expert panel that literally said they were not recommending a single legislated safeguard for MAID for mental illness.

Health committee  Thank you, Mr. Thériault. Will I have time to answer the comments he made at the beginning? He characterized a number of things about my views on the CPA and others.

Health committee  I'll answer the question briefly. The three years depends on what we do with it. If we go into it with a predetermined outcome, I think that is ideology. It is not looking at whether the evidence shows us whether or not we can actually provide MAID for mental illness safely.

Health committee  I would say that there are some psychiatrists who are willing to perform these, but in my opinion, they're willing to perform these in the absence of evidence. The fact that they're willing to do something that evidence shows they can't should not be reassuring. I have looked at the evidence of this, and once again, there is no evidence that shows that we can predict irremediability in mental illness.

Health committee  I think there are many promising developments in psychiatry and mental health. I'm not trying to suggest that we're always able to help everyone. I think we all recognize that it can be challenging sometimes. We have to remember what MAID is about. MAID is about predicting who will never get better, and we can't do that.

Health committee  Thank you for the question. I think it's a very important one because, in my opinion, Canadians have been given false reassurances that the sort of suicidality you're talking about—that's a result of mental illness symptoms—can somehow be separated from other motivations leading to MAID requests for mental illness.

Health committee  Thank you, Mr. Chair. My name is Sonu Gaind. I'm a psychiatrist, professor and governor at the University of Toronto, the chief of psychiatry at Sunnybrook, a past president of the Canadian and Ontario psychiatric associations and now the president of the new Society of Canadian Psychiatry.

Medical Assistance in Dying committee  Thank you for both your questions. I'll answer them in the order you presented them. On the issue of whether somebody could regain the will to live if they are qualifying for MAID for mental illness, the AMPQ, the Quebec association, wrote a paper supportive of expanding MAID for mental illness.

Medical Assistance in Dying committee  Yes, you're right. I'm looking at the Netherlands data, but what I will point out as well is the risk to the marginalized that this data clearly shows. When you have a fifty-fifty gender balance here for MAID when it's for reasonably foreseeable death up until now, and you expand it to psychiatric euthanasia and you find a two-to-one gender imbalance, that imbalance parallels the number of suicide attempts by women with mental illness.

Medical Assistance in Dying committee  Thank you for the question, Senator. I should clarify that my concern is that offering MAID for sole mental illness cannot be done honestly under our current framework. The whole premise of what our MAID framework has been based on and what the Canadian public has been told is that MAID is being offered for a predictable, irremediable condition.

Medical Assistance in Dying committee  Thank you, Madam Chair, for the chance to speak. My name is Sonu Gaind. I'm a professor at the University of Toronto and chief of psychiatry at Humber River Hospital, where I serve a diverse population, including marginalized communities. I'm a former president of both the Canadian Psychiatric Association and the Ontario Psychiatric Association and I sat on the Council of Canadian Academies panel on mental illness.