Mr. Michael Ryan:

The question here is around supports for people who may be in our system and acutely unwell. First, to comment on the language around that. The Act refers to "intermediate persons", which is a rather unfortunate term. That is the first thing we could change. We could change it to "persons of intermediate status".

When a person is in a state of unwellness, it is hard for him or her to know what is going on. I welcome the additional supports this legislation is trying to put in place. We need to define more what we mean by what a person is entitled to if being considered for this intermediate status. This opens up to us the question of the person's natural supports, such as the role of the family and the role of advocacy, whether the person being provided with all of the services he or she needs and whether all of the these services are linked in order that we can know if the person is in a position to consent or not. It would be useful to have a definition of "consent" for this particular section, perhaps, under head 124, which deals with definitions.

We broadly welcome this because we see it as an additional support in a time of crisis, but there needs to be good boundaries around it. In terms of the second opinion, we need to know who gives that and the independence of that person or entity? Those are our thoughts on that.