Medical Assistance in Dying committee  Thank you very much. I want to tell you a bit about my experience. I have 30 years' experience as a full-service family doctor, during which I treated a lot of mental health, because we did not have good access to psychiatry. I have had a lot of experience with treating people w

Medical Assistance in Dying committee  I am done, except to say that I agree with the “Final Report of the Expert Panel on MAID and Mental Illness” that there should be no new law, that track two provisions are working and will work for mental illness as a sole underlying condition.

Medical Assistance in Dying committee  There's only one person and that's the patient themselves. They are the ones who are suffering and have suffered, and they are the ones who can choose. We can't have anybody else making that decision. They are the ones who decide that it is unbearable and that they want a peacefu

Medical Assistance in Dying committee  With cancer, it's relatively easy. There are standard protocols. They have to have been offered the treatment, but they don't need to have taken it. For mental illness, it is not so standard because psychotherapy is different from one person to another. As we heard, there are man

Medical Assistance in Dying committee  It's just that the patient has to have seriously considered the treatment options.

Medical Assistance in Dying committee  I see physical and mental illness and suffering very similarly. People come to me sometimes and say exactly what you said, Dr. Vrakas, that they don't want to die but they want to stop suffering. The question is this: Have they been offered the treatments that might relieve the

Medical Assistance in Dying committee  No. I accept a lot of them, almost all of them. My concern was with the issues of the provinces and the colleges being responsible for the standards guidelines. There's a huge problem with that. There are 26 different colleges that are handling the professionals involved, the nur

Medical Assistance in Dying committee  Okay.

Medical Assistance in Dying committee  Absolutely, and do so immediately.

Medical Assistance in Dying committee  That's right.

Medical Assistance in Dying committee  Thank you. Yes, Health Canada has partnered with the Canadian Association of MAID Assessors and Providers to set up a national program of education. We have already been doing this, but this will be far more extensive and well done.

Medical Assistance in Dying committee  That's right.

Medical Assistance in Dying committee  Yes.

Medical Assistance in Dying committee  Why do we have that distinction? That's not mine to answer, but I can tell you my position here is that chronic conditions are similar whether they're mental or physical. Pancreatic cancer has a very strict trajectory, but the chronic conditions that people are suffering with and

Medical Assistance in Dying committee  Yes, and what I'd say is that it's more like the court case A.B. v. Canada, in which the patient had unbearable disability and pain from her inflammatory arthritis, and she said that it was not good enough. We have treatments. You can certainly say that arthritis is treatable—it