Medical Assistance in Dying committee  For the number of cases, the answer is that I don't know. When I filed through the Access to Information Act, I was told after one year that it's too private to answer. The lack of accountability and oversight is so significant that we cannot access any reliable information on th

Medical Assistance in Dying committee  I don't know what qualifications they have. They are the prison physician, so whether every prison physician is otherwise qualified or not, I don't know. My guess is that they are not always qualified. It would be hard to believe that was the case. The other issue, I would think

Medical Assistance in Dying committee  Absolutely. The first safeguard is to make release mechanisms and other options available. We cannot divorce that discussion. As long as there aren't viable release mechanisms, it's going to be very difficult to safely implement MAID in prisons. That's not a question. There have

Medical Assistance in Dying committee  It's very difficult. Many times, in prisons, dementia and other major cognitive impairments are misdiagnosed, because first responders tend to be officers. They obviously do not have any expertise in this. Even the prison physician, who might have access to seeing these people, d

Medical Assistance in Dying committee  It is not because the penal system has poor conditions; it is because of a right that's called the equivalence of care. As a result, all health care services that are provided in the community must be available in prison. That is not the case, unfortunately. We know there is subs

Medical Assistance in Dying committee  Honourable members of the joint committee, thank you so much for the invitation to make a submission before you today. As I mentioned in my correspondence with the committee clerk, my expertise is actually not in advance directives or MAID generally. Rather, it is in corrections

Medical Assistance in Dying committee  My expertise is not in advance directives generally or in MAID broadly, but rather in corrections, health care law and policy for incarcerated people and issues surrounding decarceration. So my comments today pertain specifically to the issues raised by the implementation of MAID