Medical Assistance in Dying committee  Thank you, Madam Chair.

Medical Assistance in Dying committee  I think as a general matter, clearly when it's widely recognized that there is an area where that the services are not sufficient, it would make sense to have more services available and for those services to be better resourced. Let me just note, though, that when we're talking

Medical Assistance in Dying committee  If I may, Senator Martin, I'll ask Venetia Lawless to respond to that question.

Medical Assistance in Dying committee  Senator, maybe I can start by saying that we know that the panel has looked very closely at measures taken in other jurisdictions when it comes to safeguards for dealing with cases involving mental illness. Rather than my trying to speculate on what the panel will say in their re

Medical Assistance in Dying committee  First of all, I think when MAID first came in there was a small critical mass of providers who were ready to proceed. There were individuals who had done everything but assisted dying with their patients at the end of life and they were ready to proceed, but fairly quickly we got

Medical Assistance in Dying committee  I don't think I could respond, Mr. MacGregor, with real data that says here's the actual gap. We know that there are gaps very significantly when it comes to the provision of palliative care in people's own homes, when people are needing palliative care but their situation is not

Medical Assistance in Dying committee  I agree absolutely. That is precisely what the panel has set out to do. These are undoubtedly complex and difficult decisions, but I think it is important not to enter into the discussion with, if I may use this word, “biases”. The fact of the matter is that an impulse to commit

Medical Assistance in Dying committee  I'll add if I may, Madam Chair, that in some countries the person—

Medical Assistance in Dying committee  I'm sorry. I was just going to note very quickly that in some of the Benelux countries the only minors who are eligible for an assisted death are those whose condition is terminal, so there would be no equivalent to our situation of people whose death is not reasonably foreseeabl

Medical Assistance in Dying committee  We can try, but I think we don't have good data on that under the current data collection system. It's more focused on the main underlying conditions. I'll defer to my colleague Jacquie Lemaire, if I may, Madam Chair, to just quickly respond to Mr. Maloney's question.

Medical Assistance in Dying committee  We do have data, and it's in the annual reports, Dr. Fry, so rather than my expanding on that data, I'm happy to follow up with the actual chart that shows you that information and how it's evolved over the life of MAID so far. What I will tell you is that the number of requests

Medical Assistance in Dying committee  I think that at a certain point in time you have to have some trust in these providers. I think that anyone who has dealt with the MAID community of practitioners has been struck by the due diligence—

Medical Assistance in Dying committee  —that these people exercise. If the report is incomplete, we go back to the person who submitted it.

Medical Assistance in Dying committee  We are not out there auditing every single—

Medical Assistance in Dying committee  No, I'm not telling you that. I'm telling you the report—