Dr. Louise Campbell:

It is not for profit, so its motive is entirely compassionate. I would not have a disagreement with that but I guess the larger question is whether countries which are reluctant to legislate for assistance in dying are exporting the problem to Switzerland and what that says about their squeamishness on the issue. That would be the question I would like to investigate further. I do not know if I have anything helpful to say.

If I may, I will address the issue of mental health. There are two jurisdictions, soon to be three because Canada will join them in 2024, which make provision for assisted dying to be made available to people whose sole medical condition is a mental illness. They are Belgium and the Netherlands. This is extremely controversial and is causing much debate in Canada, as members can imagine. There is a growing body of literature asking whether we are discriminating against people with mental illness who have tried treatment for 20 years and failed to have any measure of success with that treatment. Are we discriminating against those people by not making an intervention available to them to alleviate their suffering when we are possibly prepared to make that same intervention available to people whose suffering is entirely physical, when that mental suffering could be just as great, if not greater, than the physical suffering, with similar psychological sequelae? There is an important question to be asked and an enormous amount of controversy. It is very contested. I do not see that entirely prohibiting assistance in dying when mental illness is involved is entirely ethical either. It is a very difficult question.