Members of the media may directly contact the following experts on this topic:
Daphne Gilbert (English only)
Full Professor, Faculty of Law – Common Law Section and Chair of Dying with Dignity Canada.
Professor Gilbert’s research interests lie primarily in the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, with a particular emphasis on medical assistance in dying (MAID).
“I am part of a Charter challenge to this exclusion, and we argue it is discriminatory and further stigmatizes an already vulnerable group. I testified before the AMAD Committee in my capacity as a law professor and, in my session, I was the only one who defended the Charter rights of people with a mental illness compared to nine witnesses opposed to MAID for mental illness.”
James Downar (English and French)
Research Chair in Palliative and End of Life Care and Full Professor, Division of Palliative Care in the Department of Medicine, Faculty of Medicine.
Dr. Downar’s research touches on MAID, including decision-making and suffering in seriously ill patients and palliative care for the critically ill and for non-cancer illness.
“Regardless of the outcome, the process has been disappointing in that the co-chairs of the committee both openly stated their opposition to psychiatric MAID, and they chose to exclude some very important perspectives from the hearings. People can have legitimate questions about how we might assess capacity in someone with chronic mental illness, and how we determine that such an illness might be incurable. But there are very smart people who have come up with some practical approaches. It is wrong for people to simply throw up their hands and say that nobody can do this.
The Canadian Psychiatric Association and patients with lived experience were excluded, which makes it hard for the process to get a good understanding of the issues. Several committee members wrote a dissent confirming this. One of the important criticisms of the report is that the committee did not distinguish between statements that were based on data and opinion, which were contradicted by the available data. For example, there were some comments in the report that MAID recipients were disproportionately marginalized or racialized, when federal and provincial reports have repeatedly shown the opposite. These comments should not have been included in the report.
This committee concluded Canada wasn’t ready and needed a national mental health strategy with improved access to mental health options. Yet we’ve seen no movement on this strategy. Imagine how it must feel for a person with longstanding refractory mental illness to hear once again that parliamentarians won’t be giving them access to MAID until this strategy the government doesn’t seem to have any intention of developing. Certainly, there are many Canadians that struggle to access mental health resources, but there are also some people who have good access to these resources and have tried many treatments for decades, without relief. I can understand why people might say that we aren’t ready to legalize MAID for psychiatric illness, but you have to offer people something.”
Mary Helen McSweeney (English only)
Fulbright Canada Research Chair in Human Rights and Social Justice at the Human Rights Research and Education Centre (HRREC).
During her Fulbright residency at HRREC, Professor McSweeney is examining the implementation of medical assistance in dying (MAiD) across Canadian provinces, examining provincial variations in policy and healthcare provider perspectives, contributing valuable insights to ongoing discussions around end-of-life care in Canada.
“Looking at the Parliamentary report, the outcome is representative of a committee that has members with widely varying opinions. Hopefully, the Supreme Court will weigh in and provide more guidance on how to go forward like they did in Carter v. Canada.
Furthermore, research is needed to look at factors such as wait times for healthcare services and the impact of unmet social determinants of health to see if these factors have any impact on requests for MAID.”