Bill C-14 (Historical)

An Act to amend the Criminal Code and to make related amendments to other Acts (medical assistance in dying)

This enactment amends the Criminal Code to, among other things,
(a) create exemptions from the offences of culpable homicide, of aiding suicide and of administering a noxious thing, in order to permit medical practitioners and nurse practitioners to provide medical assistance in dying and to permit pharmacists and other persons to assist in the process;
(b) specify the eligibility criteria and the safeguards that must be respected before medical assistance in dying may be provided to a person;
(c) require that medical practitioners and nurse practitioners who receive requests for, and pharmacists who dispense substances in connection with the provision of, medical assist­ance in dying provide information for the purpose of permitting the monitoring of medical assistance in dying, and authorize the Minister of Health to make regulations respecting that information; and
(d) create new offences for failing to comply with the safeguards, for forging or destroying documents related to medical assistance in dying, for failing to provide the required information and for contravening the regulations.
This enactment also makes related amendments to other Acts to ensure that recourse to medical assistance in dying does not result in the loss of a pension under the Pension Act or benefits under the Canadian Forces Members and Veterans Re-establishment and Compensation Act. It amends the Corrections and Conditional Release Act to ensure that no investigation need be conducted under section 19 of that Act in the case of an inmate who receives medical assistance in dying.
This enactment provides for one or more independent reviews relating to requests by mature minors for medical assistance in dying, to advance requests and to requests where mental illness is the sole underlying medical condition.
Lastly, this enactment provides for a parliamentary review of its provisions and of the state of palliative care in Canada to commence at the start of the fifth year following the day on which it receives royal assent.

Criminal Code

[Dominic LeBlanc, Liberal, Leader of the Government in the House of Commons and Minister of Fisheries]

Mr. Speaker, I wish to state that the completion of Bill C-14 is an urgent matter because a legislative framework is needed to protect our most vulnerable in society and establish clear and consistent practices for medical professionals, while providing access to assisted dying pursuant to the Supreme Court of Canada ruling.

Therefore, pursuant to Standing Order 53, I move:

That, notwithstanding any Standing or special Order or usual practice of the House, when Orders of the Day are called later this day, a Minister of the Crown be authorized to move, without notice, a motion relating to Senate amendments to Bill C-14, An Act to amend the Criminal Code and to make related amendments to other Acts (medical assistance in dying).

Message from the Senate

[Andrew Leslie, Liberal, Orléans, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I rise on a point of order. Should you consult with the other parties, I believe you will find unanimous consent that notwithstanding any standing or special order or usual practice of the House, when orders of the day are called later this day, a minister of the Crown be authorized to move without notice a motion relating to Senate amendments to Bill C-14, an act to amend the Criminal Code and to make related amendments to other acts (medical assistance in dying).

[The Speaker, Geoff Regan]

I have the honour to inform the House that a message has been received from the Senate informing this House that the Senate has passed Bill C-14, An Act to amend the Criminal Code and to make related amendments to other Acts (medical assistance in dying), with amendments to which the concurrence of this House is desired. Copies of the amendments are available at the table.

Opposition Motion—Internal trade

[Randy Hoback, Conservative, Prince Albert, SK]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to thank all my colleagues for this important debate. I would like to acknowledge my colleague from British Columbia for the work he has done on freeing wine across Canada. I understand now his campaign to free beer is also very popular among Canadians. It is something we should continue moving forward on as we start to liberate the Canadian economy from provincial trade barriers.

I want to talk about bales. No, this is not a Liberal speech that is irrelevant to the topic. This is actually a very relevant example of what happens with interprovincial trade barriers and regulations.

Mr. Speaker, I will be sharing my time with the member for Barrie—Innisfil. He has a very important topic he wants to talk about also.

One might ask what hay bales have to do with interprovincial trade barriers. Actually, this is a very real story. In August 2003, we had a horrible frost on my farm. It took out my crop. It cost me and many of my neighbours in the area of millions of dollars. For myself alone, it cost me about a quarter of a million dollars in one night.

When a farmer has an established crop and that happens, he looks at what he can do to salvage that income. We worked with our local agriculture officials and they realized that canola, for example, made great horse feed. We did everything right and we baled that crop. We salvaged it. Then we went on the Internet, Western Producer, and places like that and we sold that crop. We sold it into Alberta. It worked out great. The horse guys in Alberta were happy. We were happy. Everything was happy-go-lucky. We got everything baled and ready to ship the crop into Alberta. The trucks hit the border, and who would have known that the regulations for a trailer in Alberta when hauling hay are different? It required a different coloured sign and different symbols on the wide load signs, and different permits.

Farmers look at this and ask, “What are you talking about? If it's safe to haul in Saskatchewan why can't it be safe to haul in Alberta, or be funded?” A neighbour gets a fine, then another neighbour gets a fine. All of a sudden the guys from Alberta are saying it is not worth the hassle to buy the hay from Saskatchewan, even though they really need it because of the drought. However, because of the interprovincial trade barriers, the regulations that were put in place, it made that move impossible to happen.

That is just one example of how a barrier like this really restricts the flow of goods across our country. It is a very real example of what costs people thousands and thousands of dollars for no reason at all. The roads were not made any safer by having different regulations. They were not improved. There was no issue other than the fact that Alberta wanted to do it one way, and Saskatchewan's NDP government at the time wanted to do it another way.

It went the other way also, when we had stuff coming back from Alberta to Saskatchewan, we had to get a permit. The Saskatchewan NDP government at the time said it did not want to get rid of the permits because they were a good cash cow. We have to remember that back at that time all our kids were moving to Alberta, so the NDP was looking for any type of taxation it could get. This was one way to do it.

When we look at that we realize that is a direct impact on what can happen when we have improper trade regulations.

I sit on the trade committee. I was actually the former chair of the trade committee. I always find it really interesting when we bring in different producers from around Canada to talk about trade. They say we need trade, that it is very important. When we ask about internal trade they say it is actually easier for them to sell their stuff in Washington than to take it out of B.C. and sell it in Alberta.

We have to scratch our heads and ask if this make sense. What is the logic behind that? What are we really trying to accomplish as a country, as a confederation, when it is easier to export our goods than to sell them next door in our own country? Those things need to be eliminated. The Comeau case really provides the government with a unique opportunity to be involved in helping eliminate barriers.

We have heard speeches here in the House today talking about how this case is probably going to go to the Supreme Court and be ruled upon by the Supreme Court. The provinces should be very worried about that. They should be so worried they might want to negotiate something beforehand to put some stability in place, so that it is done in such a way that the barriers are actually removed.

The federal government has a chance to show tremendous leadership on this file if it so chooses. Keep in mind, I am also on the trade committee that has been consulting and delaying TPP passage. Let us face it, the Liberals are going to let Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump actually write our foreign trade policy. If the Liberals would not write their own foreign trade policy, why would they write their policy here in Canada? They will just vacate that to provinces and accept whatever comes out of it. That way they are not responsible. Why show leadership? They are not used to doing that.

Another example of silliness in this market, I think, is that all of us here in Ottawa sneak across to Quebec and go to Costco. I can buy beef there, bread, wine, and beer. I can buy beer, but I better not bring it back to Ontario where I live because then I would be breaking the law. I would be like Al Capone. However, that beer in Quebec is the exact same beer that is in Ontario. It is just as safe, brewed probably in the same factory, but yet for some reason we have a barrier to prevent that from happening. It does not make sense. Canadians cannot figure that one out. The reality is, they are just ignoring it and doing it anyway.

A colleague from the NDP just stated the exact same thing. We have already seen wine shipments going across Canada, breaking these barriers as we speak. In reality, Canadians are already doing what the market should be allowed to do, and that is trade interprovincially, free.

We look at legislation, and the Liberals say we should not use litigation to solve this; we should actually negotiate and wait until negotiations move forward. Like I said previously, we could use this court case to enhance our argument in that process if we want to go through a consulting process, but litigation is a valid form for settling this. When we are breaking somebody's constitutional right, that is what the courts are there to do, whether we like it or not.

We have a perfect example of where that has happened here, right in front of us in the Senate today. Bill C-14 is because of litigation. It is because the court did not like the way the law was written. I do not agree with the court. I do not necessarily like it, but litigation was the process that was used that sent it back to this House to rewrite the law. It is valid. In fact, the government is doing it through C-14 as we speak. To say that we should not do it that way just does not make sense. It is hypocritical. It is already happening.

The reality is, the courts are there to actually protect the rights of Canadians, so in this scenario, Canadians feel that they should be able to trade freely among the provinces. I should be able to go to B.C. and sell some stuff, and the member from Kelowna should be able to come back to Prince Albert and sell his goods. As long as they meet the safety requirements, as long as they are safe, where is the issue? Why do we have these barriers?

If we looked at them more closely, I think we would see there is a good reason to get rid of them, and I will give credit to the western provinces. They actually showed some leadership on this. The New West Partnership, Premier Wall, showed lots of leadership in trying to identify what these barriers are and remove them.

Labour mobility, getting rid of the situation that we had with trucks hauling hay across the border. These things need to be eliminated, and I want to congratulate the provinces that have taken this seriously because it just happens that those are the provinces that are doing very well in this confederation. Saskatchewan has a growing, booming economy, regardless of what is happening in the oil and gas sector, what is happening everywhere else. It is still holding its own.

If we want to do economic stimulus, if we want to boost this economy without spending a dime, let us deal with these. This is one thing the Liberals could do and it would not cost them a dime, but the impact across this country would be spread and felt immediately.

[Luc Berthold, Conservative, Mégantic—L'Érable, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to rise today to speak to the motion moved by my colleague, the member for Central Okanagan—Similkameen—Nicola. This motion has been affectionately dubbed “free the beer”.

As a new member of Parliament, I must say that it is truly motivating to listen to an experienced parliamentarian like the member for Abbotsford.

This member just shared his vast experience as a minister in the previous government. His words were very inspiring, as was his belief in the importance of eliminating trade barriers.

He is an inspiration to us, and he should also serve as an inspiration to the new government, which should be taking advantage of the experience this member gained by negotiating numerous free trade agreements with other countries. These negotiations were successfully carried out by our colleague from Abbotsford, and I applaud him for that. By way of tribute, I would say:

He was fast and efficient.

I will admit that using beer as the foundation of a motion on the liberalization of internal trade is a little unexpected.

However, for the benefit of those who have been tuning in since the start of the day and who have heard about the Comeau case, but who do not really know what we are talking about right now in the House, I would like to recap because I think it can be useful to look at why the motion came to be and explain how we got to where we are.

This is about a citizen of New Brunswick, Gérard Comeau, and his fight for justice, which highlighted how difficult it is for Canadians to trade freely within our country's borders. Mr. Comeau singlehandedly broke down the barriers to internal trade.

I found a good summary of Mr. Comeau's story in an editorial. The title of the publication made me smile: it is called “Bières et plaisirs”, or “Beer and other pleasures”.

Even so, it is a very serious editorial. It recounts Mr. Comeau's story, which I will now share with the House of Commons and all of the Canadians who are tuned in.

Gérard Comeau was arrested in October 2012 in possession of 14 cases of beer and three bottles of liquor. He had just done some shopping on the Quebec side of the border. In October 2012, Gérard Comeau committed an illegal act: purchasing a quantity of alcohol over the authorized limit in another province, not in a licensed establishment.

According to the Government of New Brunswick and other Canadian governments, alcohol is under provincial jurisdiction.

Here is more from the editorial in “Bières et plaisirs”:

All residents of New Brunswick buy their alcohol in provincially owned licensed establishments: outlets of the New Brunswick Liquor Corporation, also known as the liquor commission.

That is the law as enacted in 1928, a year after the commission was created. Laws governing the sale of alcohol were enacted around that time across Canada. The goal was to protect each province's market....Many New Brunswickers prefer to buy their alcohol in Quebec, where prices are much lower. The Province of New Brunswick sometimes applies high mark-ups to wine, beer, and spirits sold in its stores.

The article goes on to say:

After receiving a guilty verdict, Gérard Comeau decided to take his case to the New Brunswick provincial court. His argument was simple: the Fathers of Confederation passed a law that stipulates that the provinces of Canada must allow interprovincial free trade, a law that was written long before all of Canada's post-prohibition laws, and one that remains in effect all across Canada....The court found in favour of Gérard Comeau. The judge ruled that the provincial law was unconstitutional. Gérard Comeau was found not guilty.

Our motion today is very clear. It recognizes one of the key elements of the vision of Canada's founding fathers:

That the House: (a) recognize that it is a constitutional right for Canadians to trade with Canadians; (b) re-affirm that the Fathers of Confederation expressed this constitutional right in Section 121 of the Constitution Act, 1867 which reads: “All Articles of the Growth, Produce, or Manufacture of any one of the Provinces shall, from and after the Union, be admitted free into each of the other Provinces”...

The wording is very clear.

I think that the article in Bières et plaisirs is a good summary of the Comeau case, but also many other cases involving countless Canadians who travel across our country and would like to take advantage of a free market here at home. It took a New Brunswick man standing up for his rights to remind us, the elected representatives of this great country, that we have an important role to play to preserve the spirit of our Constitution.

We are talking about beer here, but the Fathers of Confederation were clear:

121. All Articles of the Growth, Produce, or Manufacture of any one of the Provinces shall, from and after the Union, be admitted free into each of the other Provinces.

It is simple. I am sure that most Canadians did not even know that some provinces put up so many barriers that hinder interprovincial trade. I can understand them, because we form a single great country made up of extremely dynamic provinces and territories. We all want to improve the economy of our regions, and it is rather amazing to realize here that Canadians do not always have the right to do business with one another as they would like.

The Minister of Innovation, Science and Economic Development said this morning in the House that he prefers that any disputes be settled by negotiations between the provinces. Despite years of negotiations, it seems that the agreement the minister would like to negotiate is not possible. On this side of the House, we believe that this government does not have the leadership required to arrive at such an agreement. It is all well and good to say that the government wants to promote trade and reach an agreement with the provinces. However, at the first opportunity this government does the opposite.

Take the example of Bill C-10, which was supposed to meet Quebec's and Manitoba's expectations. By invoking closure, the government rammed through a bill that forces the legal action against Air Canada to be dropped. Lo and behold, two provinces asked us not to act too quickly because they cannot conclude their agreement as negotiated if the threat of court action, which is on their side, disappears. The government ignored the provinces' requests.

Another example is Bill C-14. The Quebec Minister of Health said that Bill C-14 was inadequate. Even so, the Liberals went ahead and imposed a gag order so that parliamentarians could not express their views.

That does not bode well for the federal-provincial negotiations under this government. Since it took office, the Liberal government has shown leadership and interest in only two things: running an ever-growing deficit and increasing the tax burden on small businesses. The Liberals have done a good job on those things.

Today, the Liberal government has a unique opportunity to do something tangible to help small businesses and, once again, it is turning its back on them by relying on a negotiation process with an unknown timeline. We are skeptical about the results of that. The second part of my colleague's motion is clear. It states:

[That the House:] (c) recognize that the recent Comeau decision in New Brunswick creates a unique opportunity to seek constitutional clarity on Section 121 from the Supreme Court of Canada; and that therefore, the House call on the government to refer the Comeau decision and its evidence to the Supreme Court for constitutional clarification of Section 121.

That would finally make it possible to set clear guidelines for trade between the provinces.

Creating more free trade in Canada is not a partisan issue. The issue here is what is fair. Canadian businesses do not want their government to tell them with whom they can and cannot do business. Businesses should be able to sell their products across Canada, and consumers should have more choices on the market.

In my member's statement today, I spoke about young entrepreneurs in Quebec. Three thousand young entrepreneurs in Quebec will make deals and work hard to sell their products and share their passions. Three thousand of them will open their own small business. Imagine telling them that they cannot do business with their neighbour because they are not on the same street. They are in the same city, same province, and even same country. These are the kinds of barriers we want to eliminate. We want to eliminate them to enable small and medium-sized businesses to do business, create wealth, and drive our economy.

I will wrap up quickly and say that this was the will of the Fathers of Confederation. The government has a unique opportunity to take action. I hope it will seize this opportunity to do away with empty rhetoric and to finally take real action for small businesses in Canada. For all these reasons, I urge the government to join me in supporting this motion to free the beer.

Physician-Assisted Dying

[Jody Wilson-Raybould, Liberal, Minister of Justice and Attorney General of Canada]

Mr. Speaker, I completely reject the premise of the questions that have been proposed. All of the discussions and the considerations by the Court of Appeal in Alberta and others were considering personal exemptions with respect to medical assistance in dying. They were not considering Bill C-14.

The Supreme Court of Canada rendered its decision in Carter. We are complying with the Carter decision in doing our jobs and putting in place a complex framework for medical assistance in dying in this country. The question is whether this bill is constitutional, and I submit that it is.

[Murray Rankin, NDP, Victoria, BC]

Mr. Speaker, the Minister of Justice insisted Bill C-14 complied with the Carter decision, but courts in Alberta and Ontario disagree. She argued the bill was constitutional, but then Canada's leading expert on constitutional law said that was not so. Now the minister is changing her tune again, saying the bill does not have to comply with the Supreme Court of Canada ruling, forgetting, it seems, that the case was based on section 7 of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

Why is the minister trying to ram through a law that, according to the Supreme Court of Canada decision, would take away Canadians' charter rights?

[Jody Wilson-Raybould, Liberal, Minister of Justice and Attorney General of Canada]

Mr. Speaker, I was pleased to release an addendum to the explanatory paper that we released previously with respect to Bill C-14, to provide additional information to parliamentarians who are considering this important piece of legislation. In considering very carefully the Carter decision, Bill C-14 would comply with the Carter decision. The Carter decision stated that a complete prohibition on medical assistance in dying is unconstitutional, and the court left it up to Parliament to put in place medical assistance in dying in this country. That is exactly what we would do in this legislation.

[Brigitte Sansoucy, NDP, Saint-Hyacinthe—Bagot, QC]

Mr. Speaker, the government is clearly all over the map with its bill on medical assistance in dying.

After assuring us that Bill C-14 complied with the Supreme Court's decision, the Minister of Justice is now telling us that her bill does not need to comply with the decision and that it only needs to comply with the charter. However, the Supreme Court based its decision on the charter.

Why this new take? Did the government finally realize that its bill does not comply with Carter or with the charter?

Opposition Motion — Decriminalization of Marijuana Possession

[Anthony Housefather, Liberal, Mount Royal, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I will be sharing my time with my hon. colleague from Saint-Léonard—Saint-Michel.

The member is definitely the best dressed member in this chamber.

Given that this is the first time I have risen today, I want to express my condolences to the victims, their families, and their friends for the horrible murder, terrorist act, hate crime, which occurred in Orlando. We were all very touched by what happened and very disconcerted. It is hard for many of us today to concentrate on the motion when we think of the crimes that ISIS is perpetuating, and now we are talking about marijuana.

Let me be blunt. I was not one of the cool kids in high school. I never tried marijuana. To be honest, I am glad that I did not. It is not my style to smoke, drink, or to use drugs, but I also understand that it is not my right to impose my own views and my own values on all Canadians. I respect and accept the fact that our party has proposed making marijuana use legal. As part of that, we also said that we were going to regulate and restrict.

While I appreciate the motion put forward by my hon. friend and colleague from Victoria, and I highly value his intellect and love working with him, I disagree with the perspective that we are going to simply decriminalize without looking at the other two very important facts: regulation and restriction.

The motion makes no distinction between 14-year-olds and 40-year-olds. It does not say that decriminalization is going to occur only for adults. It is saying decriminalization is going to occur for everyone. One of the things that is incredibly important to me is keeping marijuana out of the hands of children. Marijuana use is not without its effects.

As we all know, it can make people slightly loopy for a certain period of time, but there are also ties to breathing disorders, mental health issues, and particularly for young people whose brains are still developing, marijuana is a dangerous substance. It is not something we want to be widely distributed to our children. However, if we are going to decriminalize without dealing with how marijuana is distributed, without dealing with how we are going to keep it out of the hands of kids, we are going to enter into problems that are not anticipated by the motion.

I do understand, with a competent adult who is looking at a government that says we are going to make this legal, that we would have a certain sympathy for the fact that they are going to be prosecuted and get a criminal record. However, at the same time in my view, the law is the law is the law. Whether we agree with the law or do not agree with the law, whether we believe that a law is going to be rescinded or not, it does not mean we do not have a duty to respect the law as it is. As such, my sympathy for the people we have been talking about today is slightly muted, because they should be, just like the rest of us, respecting the law. That is what we are supposed to do until such time as the law is changed.

The NDP has raised Bill C-14 and I also want to raise Bill C-14 because one of the things this government was criticized for was the quick process that led to Bill C-14. However, in the case of Bill C-14, there was a very good reason. There was a Supreme Court deadline of June 6. In the case of marijuana, there is no deadline.

The key studies and the commentaries that we have had from the states in the United States that have legalized marijuana use, in particular Colorado, among others, has been that we should take the correct time frame to put in place the right measures to go along with legalization. We should not be rushing this.

Not only do we need to have the regulatory rules in place, but we need to have the infrastructure in place. We need to have those people who are ready to legally distribute marijuana. We need to have the police forces and judiciary prepared for the way we are going to treat this. We need to have the educational resources available for how we are going to go into the schools and explain to our young people why they should not be using marijuana and try to disincentivize them from doing so.

One of the things that is also troubling to me around the idea of accepting the motion is the question of regulation of the product itself.

We have heard from many Canadians, including the hon. member for Outremont in 2012, who talked about the fact that there was marijuana in our country that was very hard marijuana and was dangerous to health. If we are going to legalize marijuana, or even decriminalize it, we need to have standards in place to talk about how it is grown and how to prevent contaminants from getting into it to ensure the marijuana used is safe to consume, to the extent possible.

We need to talk about packaging, distribution, and how we get this out of the hands of organized crime. My fear is that, if the motion is adopted as is, who will everyone buy from? The producers of medical marijuana are not authorized to sell it to those without a prescription. There is nothing in the motion to talk about how the distribution channels would work. As such, my concern is that those people who are currently illegally distributing marijuana across Canada, basically organized crime, are going to have freer licence to go into our schools and talk to our young people about how it is not criminal to possess small amounts and encourage them to buy from them. Once that happens, what other drugs are these people in organized crime selling? How will this stop someone who starts with marijuana from moving toward harder drugs that are also sold by the same distributor, if we are going to call the Mafia that?

This is of enormous concern for me because right now in Canada we have the highest rate of minors using marijuana of 29 countries. Therefore, whatever we do in terms of the legalization process, an important part has to be how we are going to keep it out of the hands of our young people.

I have heard the argument, and respect it, that police forces going after adult possessors of small amounts of marijuana takes police away from more important things they could be doing. I completely agree with this. I do not agree that decriminalization would have the same effect, because it still means these people should be ticketed. It still means prosecutions and the officers would be going to court. The answer is not decriminalization. It is legalization, but legalization with strict enforcement mechanisms, proper surveillance, and supervision.

I am very happy that we have an expert in our government in the area of marijuana use. The hon. parliamentary secretary to the Minister of Justice is going to be leading us in this effort with his incredible former experience as the police chief of Toronto.

[Robert Aubin, NDP, Trois-Rivières, QC]

Mr. Speaker, it seems to me that, since debate on this topic began today, the discussion has been all over the map, which is probably normal with such a delicate topic.

Despite the fact that we are talking about marijuana, which is commonly known as a soft drug, some people are worried about abuse. I would like to come back to the key aspect of the motion so that we know what we are talking about. I would particularly like to draw members' attention to point (a), which is the heart of the NDP's proposal. It reads:

That the House: (a) recognize the contradiction of continuing to give Canadian criminal records for simple possession of marijuana after the government has stated that it should not be a crime;

We are talking about simple possession of marijuana. That is the situation we have been put in since the most recent election campaign. During that campaign, I often told the people who asked my opinion on the dreams, promises, and commitments of the Liberal Party to be careful because everyone knows that the Liberals tend to signal left during the election campaign and then turn right when they take office. As a result, we are now in a situation where Canadians' dreams have been shattered. There are many examples of that.

For example, we could talk about all those people who were thrilled at the prospect of a tax cut that would give them more money and help them make ends meet. Once the Liberals came to power, very few people actually benefited from a tax cut, and those who received the largest tax cuts were already among the wealthiest Canadians.

Seniors in my riding were especially attracted by the idea of investments in home care. There was nothing in the budget about that. On the environment, people were saying that they could finally see light at the end of the tunnel. The Liberal government made the same commitments as the previous government in Paris. We can clearly see that on all counts, there is a gap, actually it is an abyss, between the vision presented during the campaign and what the government is currently doing.

In the case of marijuana, I would say that there is an even greater gap, if that is possible. The Liberals told everyone that they would quickly legalize marijuana. However, that is not the case. What people continue to believe, especially adolescents, whom I really understand, is that they are invincible. In fact, I have spent most of my life in touch with adolescence, first as an adolescent myself and then as a teacher of adolescents for 25 years. When we think about our adolescence, which for most people in the House was not as long ago as mine, we can remember often having the feeling of being invincible. When we are adolescents, the things we do are not risky, and we believe everything will be fine. If we try smoking a joint, we are not going to be arrested, because that only happens to other people.

The reality is quite different, and thousands of Quebeckers and Canadians who want to try smoking a joint or consuming an edible, such as a muffin or what have you, run the risk of ending up with a criminal record. They could end up with a criminal record, even though the Liberals made a promise and said that no one in our society should end up with a criminal record for simple possession of marijuana. Therein lies the contradiction and the confusion surrounding this issue we are trying to resolve with the very simple approach of decriminalizing marijuana. The majority agrees on this measure, and we are not talking about 50% plus 1 of Canadians. We are talking about 68% of Canadians who agree with decriminalizing simple possession of marijuana. I would remind members that we are talking about simple possession.

I must admit that the issues are diametrically opposed, but I have a hard time understanding the Liberals' inconsistent approach.

In recent weeks, we have talked a lot about Bill C-14 on medical assistance in dying. We heard that even though the Supreme Court issued a clear unanimous ruling, society was not ready and we needed to move forward slowly. As a result, the Liberals proposed the criterion of reasonably foreseeable natural death, which has been challenged in both the House and the Senate.

Small steps are necessary in the case of medical assistance in dying, but in the case of simple possession of marijuana, small steps are apparently not needed. In that case, the government wants to go full bore. Legalization needs to happen immediately, which is completely impossible. We need to forget about that. All we have been promised is that a bill will be introduced in 2017. Some Liberal members are saying that it could be introduced later, and, rarely, someone says that it could be introduced earlier. We hear nothing about consistency.

We need a bill to deal with the drug issue once and for all, but the first step is to implement a simple, easy-to-understand measure for everyone. Say a teenager is influenced by a group of friends or just wants to try this once. We need to make sure our measure eliminates the possibility of ruining that teenager's life with a record that will make finding a job or travelling much more difficult. We know that teenagers are tempted to try new things. There is a disconnect there.

I would like to talk about my own transition from childhood to adolescence. In my day, things might have seemed simpler because becoming a man or daring to do the forbidden meant trying to smoke. Cigarettes could be had for a penny, back when we still had pennies.

Obviously, that has changed. Each generation is better educated than the last, and we now have very clear evidence about the dangers of cigarettes. Cigarette consumption has decreased markedly, but the battle is not yet won. Some young people still choose to smoke, and they need to be shown the negative health effects of that choice.

Right now, the legal system spends $4 million on cases that may result in records for teenagers. If we used that money to educate young people about this, we could make tremendous progress. Contrary to what my dearly departed mother believed, one toke does not a hard-drug addict make. It is a long way from the former to the latter, and we can easily interrupt that progression with health education.

Since time is running out, I will close by painting a picture of the situation using some statistics. We invest $4 million in our justice system every year, and 80% of the offences that have to be processed involve simple possession of cannabis. If members want to talk about organized crime and everything else, so be it. However, 80% of offences are related to simple possession of marijuana. That amounts to 66,000 arrests a year and 22,000 people who risk getting a criminal record.

As I said earlier, 68% of Canadians are calling on us to take this first step, go ahead with decriminalization, and work on education so that experimentation remains just that, experimentation.

What is even clearer is that all of the parties are slowly coming around to the NDP's approach, which we first proposed a number of years ago.

I see I am out of time. I will end there, as I will have an opportunity to continue through questions.

Canadian Organ Donor Registry Act

[Tom Kmiec, Conservative, Calgary Shepard, AB]

Madam Speaker, thanks to the member for Calgary Confederation's contributions at the provincial legislature in Alberta, the province has an electronic organ and tissue donor registry of which I am a donor. I subscribed myself thanks to that new system that he introduced. He is also one of the very few members of the legislative assembly when he served there who actually passed two private members' bills. I hope that fortune and that ability passes on to the member for Edmonton Manning who is pushing for a very wise bill on organ and tissue donor registry.

I have a Yiddish proverb to share with the House: “He who looks for light work goes very tired to bed.” I view the government's response to this private member's bill as a search for that light work. Personal stories on organ donor registries and about specific issues of public policy seem to have a higher impact on the backbench members of the government who might be allowed a free vote on this.

Let me share my personal story. I have three kids. My two oldest kids, Maximilian and Jolie, will both need some day the donation of a kidney to continue living. It is inevitable. There is no cure for the condition that they have called Alport syndrome and they were born with it. For a parent who has to experience that, it is profound and changes one's outlook on life. That is why I became a donor. That is why I became involved in the Kidney Foundation of Canada as a board member for the southern Alberta chapter as well.

Through that involvement I met lots of people on the Kidney March, a three-day 100-kilometre walk through beautiful Kananaskis country. I shared tents with organ donors and experienced people doing dialysis in the camp at night. They would do a 25-kilometre walk and then do dialysis in the camp, and then start completely fresh the next day because the dialysis cleaned out all the by-products in the body that come from exercise. They literally could walk another 30 kilometres the next day and they were not as tired.

I met incredible people with incredible stories of perseverance and strength. They want something like this bill. They need something like this. I met a gentleman who lost both of his kidneys on a trip to Morocco with his friends. He had an emergency flight back to Canada and they were able to save his life, but he is on a second kidney donation now. He does marathons across North America. He is literally the first one to finish the 100-kilometre walk. I tried to keep up with him and I am able-bodied and younger, but I had a tough time keeping up with him. On the second day it is a 38-kilometre walk and he finished first. It is incredible what people can achieve.

I am thinking of my kids and what they went through from the moment of diagnosis and the doctors explaining what would happen to them. An organ and tissue donor registry is the first step. We are not talking about creating an entirely new registry, we are talking about coordinating the actions being done in the different provinces. I know we already have three of these and they coordinate different facets of this. That is why I think this private member's bill goes beyond that and talks about an actual strategy on organ donation and lays out nine further points for a national strategy.

Most strategists talk about simply ideas, a principle, a thought that, although important, does not have what the member for Edmonton Manning has included here, which is nine specific areas that we could look at. I have met with specialists in this field across Canada. They are surgeons responsible for explaining to family members that their loved one is deceased or they are the ones doing the organ donation procedures. All of them say that these nine areas are an improvement that we can lend to the system, so why not legislate on it because that is what we are here to do, to pass good laws and make sure bad ones do not pass.

When I read the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Health's argument, I found three excuses I want to highlight and explain why they are not good excuses.

The duplicating of existing initiatives was one excuse. This does not duplicate. We can simply repurpose current work to meet the demands of this legislation. To say they would duplicate would indicate that work is already being done, but national organ and tissue donation rates are nothing to be proud of. They have barely improved over time. Real improvements would be to go after the structural issues and bottlenecks in the system.

Furthermore, this is probably the absolute weakest argument that can be made, because if we are already doing the work, then why not seek the path of least resistance, agree with the legislation, and simply pass it so it can be studied at committee. To say that there are existing initiatives basically says this legislation simply encapsulates what already exists, which is fine, but let us move on to the next point.

The other one the parliamentary secretary mentioned was the shift in responsibilities. She mentioned consent, confidentiality, health policies, and procedures that they are, indeed, mostly within provincial jurisdictions. My issue with that is this. Is there not a better way to coordinate it, perhaps by doing it formally, maybe in a voluntary system, which the member for Edmonton Manning included in his private member's bill? Section 5 of the law creates a voluntary opt-in, so it is optional for the provinces to participate in this. Success will breed a willingness to participate as well, so that as these different parts begin to do their work, as donation rates improve and there is success, more provinces will want to participate. Although it is within their jurisdiction, there is a voluntary component.

Provinces can voluntarily coordinate with the federal government and other provinces in order to improve the system. I will give the example of pensions. Pensions are a provincial jurisdiction, not federal. The Canada pension plan is coordinated across all provinces in Canada. Why can we not do the same thing? The same principle applies. It is not a shifting of responsibility to the federal government, saying we want a national pension plan that is transferrable from province to province; it is simply the coordination of work.

When I worked at the provincial legislature and orders in council were passed, it was basically with the consent of the different provinces and consultation with the federal government about the coordination of the pension plan, to make sure that the provincial laws and regulations that were passed were consistent across the board so that Canadians who moved across the country would have the same pension plan system, wherever they went. Why can we not have that for organ and tissue donation systems? It makes sense and I do not understand where the problem is. I do not understand why this would have been brought up as an issue.

The third point that the parliamentary secretary made was about the privacy of persons due to the collection of related personal health information. I have run into this a few times now. This was probably the most bizarre reasoning at committee. In clause by clause on Bill C-14, I wanted to introduce an amendment on written consent before the procedure, and I was told that this would impede the privacy of the person involved.

Privacy should never be used as a bottleneck or a pit trap for public policy improvements, especially when people can voluntarily surrender their privacy for the sake of a public policy goal that they agree with. We are not going after people who do not want to donate, we are trying to make it easier for people who do want to donate, to be connected with individuals who need organ or tissue donations because their lives are in danger or they have medical conditions that require organ donations.

Of course, this is voluntary and privacy should not be used in this way as an excuse not to do something, especially when the individuals involved want to help. I meet countless living donors who are so happy to have contributed to and extended someone else's life. The connection between donors and the people they have donated to is very deep. I have seen this countless times. I saw this at the Kidney March as well.

Those in need of organ or tissue donations will not stand for this type of bureaucratic logjamming. I find it is straight out of Yes, Minister. It is like we have seen this all before. It is worthy of Sir Humphrey Appleby saying that policy administration is different from the administration of the policy, and we cannot encapsulate this in the legislation. If it is being done already, let us put in the legislation. If we can coordinate better, let us do it through legislation.

Again, I do not see a reason why we cannot do this. None of the parliamentary secretary's objections, to me, stand up to scrutiny. I would urge the backbench government MPs, where I sometimes find kindred spirits, to support this bill. Let us take it to committee. If there are amendments to be made, we can do it there.

Physician-Assisted Dying

[Ruth Ellen Brosseau, NDP, Berthier—Maskinongé, QC]

Mr. Speaker, Bill C-14 violates Canadians' rights, and it is truly appalling to see this government making excuses.

The Prime Minister promised to do things differently, to make decisions based on facts, and to listen to experts. Instead, he chose to play politics, limit debate in the House, and refuse to work with the opposition on an issue as important as medical assistance in dying.

Does the Prime Minister realize that he is doing the exact same thing as the former Conservative government?

[Sean Casey, Liberal, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Justice and Attorney General of Canada]

Mr. Speaker, we believe that this bill is the best approach to guarantee that dying patients' rights are respected and to ensure that vulnerable people and the conscience rights of health care professionals are protected.

An amendment that removes the reasonably foreseeable criterion will jeopardize the delicate careful balance we have struck in Bill C-14.

[Ruth Ellen Brosseau, NDP, Berthier—Maskinongé, QC]

Mr. Speaker, the government needs to get things straight and brave the storm. The amendment passed in the Senate would bring the bill in line with the Supreme Court's decision.

As experts and the Alberta Court of Appeal have said, without this amendment, Bill C-14 does not pass the charter test and will once again be challenged in court. We need to do things right with a bill that is so important to Canadians.

Will the government act responsibly and amend Bill C-14?