Medical Assistance in Dying committee  Yes, thank you. One of the very real challenges that the Council of Canadian Academies faces is that the viewpoints of indigenous communities are by no means common. The range of viewpoints is very large. Some of them would very likely be completely opposed to any concept of med

Medical Assistance in Dying committee  Certainly the discussion around the Council of Canadian Academies table was that “decisional capacity” is a much better term than “mature minors” because “mature minors”, as a legal term, is understood by lawyers and judges, but is not so clearly understood by members of the publ

Medical Assistance in Dying committee  Certainly I understand it to be accepted quite nicely when you are talking doctor to doctor, doctor to another health care practitioner, but the legal term that has been developed when you are looking at court decisions, which is what lawyers do, is “mature minor”. It's a questio

Medical Assistance in Dying committee  Certainly, the requirement of consultation with family members is not part of the current regime. If I were eligible for medical assistance in dying, and I chose not to inform any members of my family, I am perfectly entitled to choose not to do that. Now, whether the physicians

Medical Assistance in Dying committee  I feel most strongly about those situations in which death is reasonably foreseeable. I think there are some interesting constitutional arguments, because of course with adults the decision in Quebec required that medical assistance in dying must be made available whether death i

Medical Assistance in Dying committee  “Mature minor” means somebody who has decisional capacity with respect to the specific decision they're being asked to make. They need to be in a position to be able to understand the risks and benefits of the decision they are being asked to make, fully understand the implicatio

Medical Assistance in Dying committee  Thank you so much. I'll answer the second question first, because I don't think there's any evidence as it specifically relates to medical assistance in dying. However, there is good evidence as it relates to many other life-challenging decisions. The number of significant disag

Medical Assistance in Dying committee  And the same recurring theme, I suggest, was the subject of discussions with respect to adults, because I've been involved in those discussions for quite some time. Not that it's a perfect answer, but all of the evidence suggests that the people currently accessing medical assist

Medical Assistance in Dying committee  Thank you so much. I am a regulator. I've worked with professional regulation for a long time. One role of professional regulation is to ensure that professional standards are upheld. One concern I would have, if this was incorporated in some form of regulation or statute, is th

Medical Assistance in Dying committee  Just very quickly, decisional capacity is very much based upon the nature of the decision to be made. What we're talking about here is a very significant decision resulting in death, so the decisional capacity that will be required for medical assistance in dying will be very sig

Medical Assistance in Dying committee  Yes, and again, I concur with what Professor MacIntosh has to say. The point I was trying to make and obviously made poorly is that if you have a requirement of consent, it has some unintended consequences that may be problematic, in that in fact now you are involving the parent

Medical Assistance in Dying committee  —a very rare situation in which parents would say “absolutely not” if there has been that discussion.

Medical Assistance in Dying committee  To the extent that there is evidence out there, it is older evidence in the report of the Council of Canadian Academies. The population appears to be quite split in terms of what their perspective was a few years ago. What I think I can say is that over time, MAID as a general c

Medical Assistance in Dying committee  I completely agree with Professor MacIntosh's comments. Carter is based upon the idea that it is unconstitutional to deny people who are suffering intolerably the right to have a suitable end to their life that's done in a compassionate way. There's nothing in Carter that would s

Medical Assistance in Dying committee  Thank you. I certainly want to echo the comments of Professor MacIntosh in almost everything that she has said. By way of my background, I've been a lawyer for the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Saskatchewan for the past 23 years. I have responsibility for policy develo