This will be an online Zoom meeting. See our online meeting instructions at: https://torontooasis.org/online-meeting-instructions
Our program will run from 11 am to 12:30 pm but you can join in to the meeting starting at 10:45 am. Volunteers please join by 10:30am.
Our featured speaker will be Tim Mt. Pleasant. Through a non-legal frame of reference, Tim will speak about the emerging challenges of requesting information and receiving health care services about Medical Assistance in Dying within Canada. While health care is constitutionally the responsibility of the provinces and territories, the Criminal Code of Canada, at times, precludes the health care practitioners’ duty to their patients. Tim will speak to MAiD, in Ontario specifically. This will touch on the challenges faced by the conception of palliative care and the prohibitive language that continues within Canada’s Criminal Code concerning the counselling of suicide. Tim will utilize patient and practitioner illustrations to provide an alternative to the single-story that we are sometimes subject to, through popular media and current political discourse. The Philosopher Margaret Pabst-Battin is someone who questioned whether suicide could ever be a “rational act.” She would later participate in her own husband’s request for the cessation of medical treatment while lying by his side in bed after a traumatic downhill biking accident. Tim posits that patients, MAiD practitioners, and a large proportion of the population either support or question what MAiD means to them.
Tim Mt. Pleasant is a First Nations member of the LGBTQ2S+ and Disabled community from Six Nations of the Grand River First Nation and is currently studying Philosophy at Ryerson University. His experience comes from work in the Long-Term Care (10 years), Mental Health/Addictions (8 years) and Public Service Sector during the last 22 years. Tim has an interest in the area of Bioethics and in the values that one assumes when entering various systems, the fluidity of control and capacity, in addition to the new realm of Medical Assistance in Dying (MAiD).
Tim volunteers in areas that allow him to advocate for those with Mental Health or Addictions challenges, including marginalized populations and those that get lost in various systems, specifically within Health Care and Social Services sectors. He has served on the Board of Directors of PFLAG Canada, the Canadian Bioethics Society, ARCH Disability Law Centre, Community Resource Connections of Toronto, Toronto Distress Centres, and the Native Canadian Centre of Toronto. Tim is also a member of and currently sits on the Equity Committee of the Canadian Philosophical Association and Ryerson’s Research Ethics Board. Tim recently completed an Undergraduate placement in Bioethics @ Princess Margaret Cancer Centre / University Health network and is working to complete his final year of Philosophical studies at Ryerson. Tim plans to pursue graduate work in Public Health and Bioethics or Philosophy and Law. This next year will be one where these rather large decisions will be made.
Please RSVP on meetup:
https://www.meetup.com/Toronto-Oasis/events/pzpxrrybcjbsb/
Looking forward to seeing familiar faces and perhaps some new ones!