Physician-Assisted Dying committee  The reason people have taken their lives before the time has come—people from Dying With Dignity named some high-profile cases—is that they are terrified about what might happen. If they lose the ability to travel to Switzerland or administer a fatal dose or whatever, they will be trapped in their bodies, miserable forever.

Physician-Assisted Dying committee  Thank you very much. I am happy to be here this evening. As many parliamentarians here, including the co-chair, will attest, none of us ever think we're going to be former parliamentarians—

Physician-Assisted Dying committee  —but yet here we are, so I am very grateful to have the opportunity to speak in front of this group and give you my two cents on legislation that's really important. I'm going to go really fast, because there's a lot of ground to cover in a short time. First, when I was 23, I had everything going for me.

Physician-Assisted Dying committee  I was completely paralyzed and intubated. This is very important. I had tubes in my nose going to my lungs, and because my lungs had essentially collapsed—I didn't have a diaphragm helping me breathe like everyone else—I was on a machine for about three months, fully conscious, but getting phlegm sucked out of my lungs minute after minute, hour after hour, day after day, week after week, month after month.