Thank you very much, Chairs.
Thank you again to Ms. Hoffman and Mr. Potter for coming in and sharing your information with us.
I must say that I'm impressed by Ms. Hoffman's ability to answer these very complex questions with her own complex knowledge of the issues. She has been really following up on everything.
I have two quick things I want to ask about. One of them goes back to the issue of advance directives. Before MAID and before the Carter decision, etc., physicians were providing advance directives with their patients for ages. They were doing it under the guideline of the colleges to talk about ethical decision-making with a patient who feels they want to have an advance directive, and it's been done under those jurisdictions.
I want to know why, and whether, there is intent by the Government of Canada to decide that it will enter into the College of Physicians and Surgeons' ethical and knowledgeable decision-making by which it guides physicians and suddenly impose some sort of heavy-handed legislation on how physicians should practise with regard to things like advance directives, which are very physician-patient-related and therefore involve privileged decision-making. That is the first question.
This is the second question, and then I'll let you guys go after it.
We know that on the question of social vulnerabilities and other vulnerabilities, many countries have had a long-standing practice of MAID. There are Luxembourg, Belgium and Switzerland, as well as the states of Washington and Oregon, and so on. We know that in fact two—the Netherlands and Oregon— stand out with regard to looking at the issue of how to protect vulnerable persons in terms of how MAID is done, and they now have a good evidence-based decision with respect to how that worked and whether or not it worked.
Have you guys been looking at what the evidence from those jurisdictions is now telling us?
Thank you.