Subscribe to our Newsletter

Subscribe to our Newsletter

Laurie in Debate

Bill 40: Personal Directives Amendment Act, 2007

Alberta Hansard – November 21, 2007

Bill 40: Personal Directives Amendment Act, 2007 Committee of the Whole debate in the 26th Legislature of Alberta, 3rd Session by Ms. Laurie Blakeman, MLA Edmonton-Centre

Ms Blakeman: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I’m also rising in support of my colleague from Lethbridge-East’s amendment on Bill 40, the Personal Directives Amendment Act, 2007. I’ve had a similar experience, actually, in my office just recently to what was just described by Edmonton-Glenora. We’re talking a personal directive, which ideally is done while someone is of full faculty and then is possibly implemented when they’re not or when they’re quite ill; that is, it’s ranking along the same level as the trusteeship and the guardianship laws that we have in place. What I’m seeing in my office is that increasingly there are more shades of grey. Either we understand declining mental faculties and acuity more than we used to and see those many gradated shades of grey or perhaps there actually are more levels of that. I’m not the expert to be making a definitive statement on that, but I certainly see the effect of that. I’m frustrated in some of the other areas I’m dealing with, like trusteeship and guardianship but also personal directives, in how you question these once they’re in place. The Member for Lethbridge- East is clearly trying to capture that in saying that there has to be an investigation that takes place “ where there are reasonable grounds” – we’re not going to, you know, just go charging off on this one – “ to believe that a complainant has been, or will be harmed mentally or physically.” I think it’s important to have those double checks in place there. We can start on this one, and I think we need to move on and look at the trustee arrangements and the guardianship arrangements in Alberta as well.

The other reason that I want to bring this up is that, to me, the personal directives is closely tied to another bill before the House at this time, which is Bill 31. That is a bill that is amending the Mental Health Act to implement or institute community treatment orders. When I spoke about that bill in second reading, I had recommended that personal directives should be used for people that are finding themselves in that situation – that is, they have a mental illness, they’re diagnosed schizophrenic or bipolar, I suppose, some other kind of psychosis; not that bipolar is a psychosis – when they are in better health, in clear thinking to be able to make the choices about the kind of health care they’re going to receive by issuing a personal directive. When/ if their situation deteriorated, they stop taking the drugs, something happened to them, they get ill, whatever, the personal directive could then be brought into play to determine how they would get medical treatment.

I think it’s increasingly important as we move forward that people are able to choose or even refuse medical treatment. I think this amendment would also be useful when we look at that idea of someone who may be subject to a community treatment order or perhaps is likely to be subject to a community treatment order. We need to be able to safeguard that there isn’t a mental or a physical harm or threat – and I think threat is equally valid – in the way that they’re being treated.

We’re uncomfortable around people that have mental illness.

We’re very quick to go, “Oh, they’ve got a mental illness. That scares me. I’m not going to deal with them,” and we back away. We tend not to ever go back to them, so if somebody had a bad day – why is it that all of us are allowed to have a bad day except for people with mental illness? When they have a bad day, that’s it. They’re tarnished with that forevermore, and people won’t deal with them. They won’t go back to them and go: “Okay. Was that really true? Was that really happening to you? Are you feeling better today? Is that person still bothering you?” We don’t go back and check. From then on anything the person says, it’s – cue the scary music, you know – “They’re dangerous. They’re crazy. We’re not going to deal with this anymore.” I think we need to be particularly careful as a result of that.

I’m reminded of a small episode that I had with someone that I was visiting in long-term care. You know, they started talking about something, and to me it did not connect with anything that we’d been talking about. I thought: “Oh, oh” – cue the scary music – “this is it. They’ve lost it. They’ve lost their faculties. They’ve gone into dementia-land. They’re never coming back.” There was somebody else in the room with me who actually said: “Just a minute. They were watching television while you were doing something else. What they’re talking about was actually on the TV a few minutes ago.”

What it was was an older person talking about those games, Xbox, and those animated, computer-generated games. In my head, an older person, a geriatric person, talking about these young people’s games: I thought they didn’t know what they were talking about. Where on earth could this have come from? Well, it turned out they were watching TV. It was perfectly legitimate. But I’d already put it in my head that this was not expected or not legitimate. I think that as we move forward with people living longer lives, more likely to have multiple injuries or diseases that they are moving through life with – and we’re going to live longer now. Probably the generation that we have in our pages here will live to be 100 and more. Yeah, they’re going to be 90. They’re going to have diabetes and a new hip and probably a new ankle. They probably will have had laser surgery on their eyes. You know, we’re living longer, but the parts are wearing out, and we’re replacing them.

We have to be particularly careful that we don’t make those kinds of decisions for people without there being a double-check clause, which is what the Member for Lethbridge-East is trying to accomplish with this amendment. I encourage people to give it another look. I think we have to be very careful.

I really like the idea of personal directives. I think that would be a solution for many people, to be able to leave a clear indication of how they want health and other matters dealt with if they’re not conscious and/ or available to direct those actions around them, but we have to make sure that we don’t put them in a position where assumptions have been made and then not let them be able to reverse that.

Thank you for the opportunity to speak in favour of this amendment.