Medical Assistance in Dying committee  Good evening. As a rehabilitation specialist physician, I have 23 years of clinical and research experience with people with spinal cord injury. I follow them from acute care through rehab and transition to the community, and lifelong to manage symptoms, prevent complications a

Medical Assistance in Dying committee  It's a good question, and nobody has the exact answer. The study that we did and the one that my Saskatchewan colleagues published this year are very similar studies. The questions by my Saskatchewan colleagues to the people living with disability.... As we've heard today, the

Medical Assistance in Dying committee  It could be a new severe...any medical issue, really, that makes people say, “I wouldn't want to live like that.” A lot of patients who come into it, like I said, have this preconceived notion that many of us would have if we hadn't worked with that population, which is that liv

Medical Assistance in Dying committee  No. Thank you for asking that. I should clarify. My point was to show you that—

Medical Assistance in Dying committee  No.

Medical Assistance in Dying committee  No. It wasn't a code-of-conduct issue. The ICU doctors have to make counselling decisions with patients every day. They have to help patients and family members realize what is going to be worth keeping—

Medical Assistance in Dying committee  Thank you. As a physiatrist or a physical medicine and rehabilitation specialist, there are lots of people like me who deal with spinal cord injury in a rehab centre who would have the perspective I have. However, it's the acute care health care professionals who have their prec

Medical Assistance in Dying committee  Thank you. One thing that is lacking here in my program, and that I think is lacking in many places across Canada, is psychological support. You can imagine what that person you were talking about went through in his dark days. In our study we heard the same thing. The people I

Medical Assistance in Dying committee  There a couple of things there. When someone has lived in the community and they've lived their life with a spinal cord injury.... I've talked to patients and some of my patients have applied for MAID. Some of them have qualified, but have put in on the back burner. They just wa

Medical Assistance in Dying committee  It's just the control of it, and I can't say that everybody.... If somebody gets asked to see somebody who's asking to die in the first several months of their spinal cord injury, even if they've gone through this course, I don't know.... As David Shannon said—

Medical Assistance in Dying committee  I don't know of anybody in my province, but I know of one in another province—

Medical Assistance in Dying committee  I can't tell you the number of patients. Again, that's talking more about those very early on, when the ICU doctors do have to make counselling—again not just to people with significant new disabilities, but all the time—about whether they should be carrying on with their aggress

Medical Assistance in Dying committee  No, these are the—

Medical Assistance in Dying committee  MAID assessors aren't counselling people to die. They're counselling—

Medical Assistance in Dying committee  As I was saying, I'm talking about the acute care very early on. People have to make those counselling.... They have to counsel people about these things every day, again not just about—