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.

Public Service Labour Relations Act

[Randall Garrison, NDP, Esquimalt—Saanich—Sooke, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I thank the hon. member for Rosemont—La Petite-Patrie for his work on a day-to-day basis in the House as an effective voice for working people.

His question gives me an opportunity to say again what I think has happened in Bill C-14 and again in Bill C-7. I do not know where the Liberals get these restrictions they have introduced in both bills. I think Bills C-14 and C-7 alike are headed to litigation.

Rather than solving the problem and getting on with the business of the country, we will be sending people back into the courts on both of these bills. I do not understand why the recommendations in Bill C-14 were not those of the special committee. In Bill C-7, I do not know who made these recommendations. There is no evidence about why things like staffing and harassment were excluded from collective bargaining. I do not know where this idea came from, but I certainly doubt that it is constitutional.

[Randall Garrison, NDP, Esquimalt—Saanich—Sooke, BC]

I did see him in the precinct today, Madam Speaker. He now works for the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, so he is still doing very good work.

The Supreme Court of Canada decision is what brought us to where we are today. It is interesting that the Supreme Court has very rarely overruled itself. It has very rarely overruled its previous decisions. In 1999, it had upheld the prohibition on an RCMP union, so I would say it was very unexpected in the legal community that there was such a clear decision in January 2015 in favour of the right of the RCMP members to unionize. It was a six-to-one decision at that time.

Let me read a couple of quotes from the Supreme Court majority in that decision. It states:

We conclude that the s. 2(d) guarantee of freedom of association protects a meaningful process of collective bargaining that provides employees with a degree of choice and independence sufficient to enable them to determine and pursue their collective interests.

It is saying that the regime that was in place, the staff representatives, did not provide what other Canadians were entitled to under the charter, which was to have a choice about who represents them and have those representatives be independent of the RCMP management in this case.

The decision went on to state:

While the RCMP’s mandate differs from that of other police forces, there is no evidence that providing the RCMP a labour relations scheme similar to that enjoyed by other police forces would prevent it from fulfilling its mandate.

What it is really saying is what we know to be true, that in order to have restrictions on rights in Canada, our Constitution requires that they be reasonable, demonstrably justified, and proportionate to some public interest. What the court found in this case is that there was no public interest that justified these kinds of restrictions on collective bargaining for the RCMP.

Quite often in the House, we have talked about “deadlines” set by the Supreme Court: in the case of assisted suicide and in the case of this bill on RCMP unionization. I have always argued, and will still argue, that these are not deadlines. What the court said in both of these cases is that it finds the existing laws unconstitutional, but it will give Parliament a chance to legislate if it wishes to do something different. If Parliament does not legislate by this date, then the law that was in existence will be unconstitutional and the normal legal framework will apply. If we did not pass this by the deadline, which we clearly have not, the RCMP would fall under the Public Service Labour Relations Act.

I am not arguing that we do not need a bill. I actually think there are some justifications for having a bill and for separating the RCMP out from other labour relations associations. The surprise, or not surprise, I guess I would say, is that the Canadian Police Association and the Mounted Police Professional Association also agree with that. There is no demand for all of them to become teamsters or steelworkers. That is not what they are looking for.

Bill C-7 says that there should be one national union representing police only, and that is not really a controversial point, so having a bill that would establish that framework is not a bad idea. However, that is probably about as far as I can go with Bill C-7, because the other main provisions of the bill take away all the aspects that really make meaningful collective bargaining.

I would submit that, just like the bill that was presented on assisted suicide, Bill C-14, Bill C-7 is probably unconstitutional. It is certain to launch another whole round of litigation and will force the spending of both RCMP members' money and public money, as well as the court's time on something we really do not need to do.

The court decision was quite clear at six to one. If we respected that decision in the proposed law, we would be done with this. The new regime of labour relations could then get on with the job of improving the RCMP and the working conditions, including the health and safety of RCMP members. Again, we must remember that our constitutional regime says that the limits are acceptable on rights only if they are reasonable and demonstrably justified in a free and democratic society, and if these limits are proportional to a specific public objective.

What is the public objective in saying that this new labour relations organization could not talk about staffing, deployment, harassment, or discipline? Again, in the quote I read earlier from the decision, it is very clear that the court said that there is no public objective that justifies limiting collective bargaining for the RCMP. Therefore, I would argue that, in parallel, there is also no public objective being achieved by these specific exclusions from collective bargaining.

I do not think we have heard from the government why it selected these things. I have not heard the justification for these exclusions, and the Liberals have not given me a legal argument of how they think this would stand up in court, if we get there again. As I said, I think Bill C-7 is bound for litigation, and that is an unfortunate thing.

Our courts are clogged with all kinds of important issues, and to have their time taken up with something that has been there in 1999 and 2015, to have it back sometime later this year or in 2017 is a waste of everyone's time and resources.

I, of course, as a member of the NDP, supported our position that these exclusions should have been taken out at committee stage. Unfortunately, the government failed to do that, and I believe the Conservatives also supported leaving these exclusions in. However, I will give credit to the government here that it did agree to remove clauses 40 and 42, which would have placed occupational health and safety under workers' compensation boards province by province.

Clearly, there are some exceptional things about the RCMP as a workforce, and it would not have been acceptable to establish a regime where RCMP members, depending on where they were stationed, would be eligible for different kinds of compensation, benefits, or rehabilitation. Therefore, I do applaud the government in agreeing with both the Conservatives and the NDP to take out clauses 40 and 42 and keep occupational health and safety a uniform regime across the country, so that it would not really matter where an RCMP member served, because RCMP members would be entitled to the same package of benefits and protections.

When we talk about staffing, deployment, harassment, and discipline being excluded, what does that actually mean? This is where I go back to all four things I dealt with almost 20 years ago when I first took on being the labour relations representative of my police board.

Staffing is the question of how much work one has to do, whether the vacant positions are filled, and how long is acceptable to leave positions vacant. I know from the RCMP in my own riding on the west shore, where the population was growing and the demands were very great, that there was concern from rank and file members over those four positions that they should have had, that were authorized, but I believe took six years to fill, and it could have been longer. My memory does not serve me so well, because it was so long in actually getting the people they needed.

What impact does that have on the operation of the RCMP? Well, one could say that it causes it to spend more money or it takes away management prerogatives. However, I can tell members that, from the point of view of rank and file people, staffing is about how much overtime they have to work that they do not want to work, that they would rather spend with their family, or rather spend, as most RCMP officers do, volunteering in community events. They wonder if they would be forced to work overtime because those vacancies have not been filled.

This is not to say that the new union of the members would fill the vacancies or decide when they are filled, but they might be able to argue in bargaining what a reasonable time frame would be when a position is not filled. They could say in their collective agreement that, when a position is vacant, it must be filled within six months or within a year. Why is that not something they could bargain about? It is something certainly that I bargained about with our police union: what is an acceptable time frame for filling vacancies?

I simply do not understand why that would not be subject to collective bargaining for the RCMP.

The second one would be deployment. The question of deployment was that of relief and backup, in particular, in municipal forces. How many officers per car? Was it safe to have one officer per car, or did it require two? Through negotiations, after I left the board, it was finally resolved that there were different hours of the day that required different deployment and staffing.

However, what we got through collective bargaining was the input of those rank-and-file members who said that in the daytime it was probably okay to have one officer per car because there were a lot of people on duty, and a lot of resources and backup to call on. However, at nighttime, one person in the car, at three a.m., was probably not a good idea. That was what we were discussing at that time. Again, I do not see how that does not do anything but contribute to better policing for the community and better working conditions for the RCMP, to be able to discuss deployment.

The RCMP also has a lot of very small detachments. One of the big problems that comes up in those detachments is relief. If the RCMP officer is the only officer or one of two officers in a community, how does he or she get any relief from the 24-hour a day demands? What would be wrong with negotiating that if he or she has been the only one, or the only two officers, for a certain period of time, then someone has to come in and relieve the officer of those duties? That would be discussed at collective bargaining. Again, it is about better community policing and better working conditions for RCMP members.

The question of harassment is the one that is the most shocking to me. We dealt with harassment in the police force. When I was appointed to the board, I was the first openly gay police board member in British Columbia. We sat down with the union. First, I had met with the chief, and I said, “Just so you know, my mother already knows.” The chief said, “We already know. We are not called the police for nothing.” We got off to a very good start by having harassment training.

The union met with the board, and we agreed to do harassment training. No one forced anyone to do training. The Board members said that they would go through the training first, and would then ask the union to agree to go through it.

The union president at that time said that it was a complete waste of time. At the end of it, he came back and said that he was wrong, that there were practices taking place in our force that he did not even recognize as harassment.

The last one is discipline. When there is bargaining about discipline, it is not saying the rank-and-file members get to decide if someone is disciplined. They need a voice on what is a fair process for discipline and a voice on what is fair representation.

Those are the kinds of issues with which I had to deal. What are the right time frames? What evidence should be available? Are police officers held to the legal standards of the court in their own disciplinary proceedings? Is that fair or should there be some other disciplinary process agreed to?

Again, all four of these things that are excluded are crucial to having a good working environment for RCMP rank-and-file members, and they also contribute to better policing of our communities.

I know my time is drawing short, but I want to talk about one more staffing issue which has been on my radar since I first got involved in policing. It is the question of recruitment and retirement. It will probably come to a shock to most members in the House that one out of ten police officers in the entire country is currently eligible to retire tomorrow. Officers are staying on and working because of their dedication, but they are already eligible to retire.

How will we deal with that crisis of person power in the RCMP? One of the best ways to do that is to work with the members of the RCMP who are serving now and ask them what are reasonable ways to conquer what is really a crisis.

The other one is recruitment. At the beginning there was some resistance, even in our police force, to using diversity as a criteria in recruiting. We worked with the union at the time. Again, the same union president came back to me and said that when I said that we were not a very diverse police force—we were are all white men—that this was obvious. What was not obvious were the benefits that would come to policing from having a more diverse police force.

They hired two people from the first nations community and two gay and lesbian police officers. He told me that they now had contacts in communities that they never had before, and it helped them do a better job of policing.

Again, negotiating with the rank-and-file unions about issues of staffing, like recruitment, retention, and retirement, will lead to better policing for all of us.

I am sorry I cannot vote for the bill that would establish a framework for a union for the RCMP, but my reason for doing that is the unacceptable exclusions from collective bargaining.

[Garnett Genuis, Conservative, Sherwood Park—Fort Saskatchewan, AB]

Madam Speaker, it is a real pleasure for me to join this important debate on Bill C-7.

I appreciate hearing the thoughtful comments from all members in this House, especially the contribution of members like the member for Yellowhead who just spoke, who have significant experience themselves, or, in other cases, experience through their families with the RCMP. We are all very grateful for their service and for the context that members coming from different walks of life bring to this place.

For people elsewhere who may have just started watching this debate, I want to start my remarks by reviewing some of the basic groundwork in terms of what this bill does.

This legislation seeks to implement a Supreme Court decision that opened the door for the RCMP to form a union. We, in the official opposition, respect the decision of the Supreme Court and recognize that RCMP members are entitled to pursue membership in a union.

We think there are many aspects of Bill C-7 that are positive. In general, it is a reasonable response to the court ruling.

However, on this side of the House, we have consistently taken a very clear position on the importance of a secret ballot. I will talk more about why a secret ballot is important in this specific context and in general. However, that is the principal stumbling block on this legislation for those of us in the official opposition.

We think there are a lot of good things about this legislation, but it is not acceptable to us that a mechanism would be created for joining a union, for electing officials, for anything of that nature, that does not involve a proper democratic process.

Also, by way of context, it is important that the public knows that wage disputes will still be resolved through binding arbitration. This does not open the door to police officers being on strike or anything like that. That is an important element of context as we approach this legislation and the discussion around it.

As we are talking about the RCMP, I want to acknowledge the important work that RCMP officers do across this country, especially in my riding of Sherwood Park—Fort Saskatchewan. We do not have municipal police forces in my constituency. We are fully served by the women and men in the RCMP, and the great work that they do.

The RCMP is an icon. It is one of those recognizable Canadian icons around the world. At the local level, I have personally seen the great work that the RCMP does with the community. That is not just front-end policing, but also engaging in a constructive way with members of the community and with community organizations on issues like education, crime prevention, and those kinds of things.

I am very grateful for the contribution of the RCMP in my constituency and across the country, as well as here on Parliament Hill. We are supported in our work and our functions here by the security that members of the RCMP provide.

I talked earlier about the importance of the secret ballot for us. It is surprising that the government does not get it. I have said before that I would have thought that the debate on the secret ballot was concluded in the 19th century. To coin a phrase, it is 2016. It is strange that there still is no recognition by the government and by other parties of the importance of the secret ballot.

I will say that it is not only this bill but the process that brings this bill forward that marks a double attack against democracy. We not only have an attack on the principle of the secret ballot, but we also have the government not respecting the prerogative of members who wish to speak to the bill by moving forward with their overly aggressive approach to time allocation.

I do think there are appropriate uses of time allocation, of course. These are cases where maybe opposition parties are engaging in deleterious tactics. The government does, in certain contexts, have to move legislation forward. However, in a fairly short time, we have seen the government ramping up the scales on the use of time allocation or closure. This bill is no exception, in spite of the goodwill from the opposition and the effort to work constructively on allocation of time around these things.

We have had this on the euthanasia and assisted suicide bill, and on the budget bill. With regard to this legislation, which is under the gun of time allocation, what the government is doing here is perhaps not as egregious as we have seen in some other cases. I have mentioned. Bill C-14 as one of the most difficult and challenging issues that Parliament has dealt with in a very long time. However, there is still a failure to recognize the importance of the secret ballot and the prerogative of members wanting to speak to and have a fulsome debate on legislation like this. It is a concerning pattern that we see of the government not respecting the principles that should be very important to a well-functioning democratic polity.

That puts this in some important context. On the substantive side, as we talk about the issue of the secret ballot, I want to start by talking about responses to some of the different kinds of arguments we have heard today in this debate, and some of the specific issues around the secret ballot in the context of the RCMP. After that, I will talk about some of the underlying foundational and motivating arguments about the secret ballot and why secret ballots are important. Again, I do not think these are arguments that should have to be made, but clearly they need to be made.

In the context of this specific bill and the RCMP, I want to talk specifically about secret ballots in the context of government certification. We can look at the workplace in some sense as a sort of negotiation, maybe a competition, between workers and their employers. There are certain tools that workers have, and there are certain tools that employers have. It is worth acknowledging that in that sort of imagined competition, public sector workers have an additional advantage. They can bring public pressure to bear on the government to try to bring about concessions in the process of collective bargaining or other forms of negotiation over wages. This is a strategic advantage in that competition or relationship that does not exist in the private sector.

A group of private sector employees cannot organize to vote out their employer, but that is something that public sector employees can do. Therefore, there are additional tools that are available to the public sector. That needs to be recognized and acknowledged as we talk about these dynamics. That helps us to understand the history of why there are higher levels of unionization in the public sector, and also why every certification vote in the public sector has happened via secret ballot, which has led to these higher rates of unionization. There is this strategic advantage.

To the extent that members may raise concerns about employer intimidation preventing certification, it would have to be acknowledged that it is much less plausible in the context of the public sector, again because of these strategic dynamics. Taking that into consideration, it is difficult to justify not allowing a secret ballot in this specific context. The worries that might exist around this in other sectors could be plausibly applied in the case of the public sector.

One of the other strands we have heard in this debate is members saying that a secret ballot could still happen, that, after all, the legislation does not effectively prohibit the use of a secret ballot but simply leaves that determination to a subsequent discussion and evaluation. That is true. There is nothing in this legislation that prohibits the use of a secret ballot. It is possible that a secret ballot could be used or not, but I do not think it is good enough. If one believes that a secret ballot is important, and I think members would acknowledge in many cases how critical a secret ballot is, I do not think it is sufficient to say that there might be a secret ballot.

If I told my constituents that in the next election some ridings in Canada will have secret ballots if we determine they need them and other ridings will not have secret ballots if we determine they do not need them, I do not think my constituents would be particularly satisfied with that. They would say that if a secret ballot is the most fair, honest, reasonable, and democratic way of conducting an election, then why should that not be available to everyone? Why should it not be a guarantee instead of just a possibility? I do not think the argument that there might be a secret ballot holds much water.

We have had some discussion in this debate about the extent to which the RCMP is like the rest of the public service and the extent to which the RCMP is different. It was interesting. I listened to the speech of my friend from Oakville North—Burlington. In the context of questions and comments, she effectively gave very different answers to that question, first in response to my question, and then in response to a question from the member for Esquimalt—Saanich—Sooke. She said on the one hand that we need to have the same process as other public sector individuals, and then she said the RCMP is different. Which is it? This would be our take on that.

Certainly there are important differences between the RCMP and other organizations within the public service. That is why it was important to have some of the variations, some of the exclusions, which were put in this legislation. I think at least our party and the government acknowledged the importance of those exclusions, and our members worked very hard at the committee to refine and deepen those exclusions.

However, the secret ballot is important for everyone. We would advocate a secret ballot in all cases, as we have done on a variety of different measures. The principle of a secret ballot for choosing representatives, for choosing which bargaining unit, or if an individual would like to associate with a particular bargaining unit, is so important that it should not be left to chance. It should not be maybe sometimes and maybe not elsewhere. That is why we have advocated for this consistently across the board.

As well, it is particularly important to have a secret ballot in the case of the RCMP. These are, after all, the women and men on the front lines who are defending us, protecting the physical security of our democracy. We call on the RCMP to ensure the safety and stability of the democratic process and of our lives within this country. For us to then deny the RCMP the same rights that others have in other contexts when they elect people, to deny them the right to the secret ballot in this case, would seem particularly perverse, to me at least. At the same time that they are protecting our fundamental democratic rights, that we would deny those rights to them as members of the RCMP—notwithstanding that we think the secret ballot should be available to all—in that particular situation is quite perverse.

The discussion has also been around the alternative to the secret ballot and how that would look in practice in the RCMP. Some members favour a card-check system. For those who do not know, a card-check system basically involves some members who are seeking a certification asking other members of a potential bargaining unit who want to certify to then sign and check on a card that they would like to sign up. If a certain threshold is achieved in terms of these sign-ups, then there is no subsequent process of deliberation or election; the certification simply then occurs after that card-check system has been evaluated. It occurs automatically.

There are a lot of obvious problems with that. This is a form of public ballot. It does not respect the privacy of the individuals who are being asked to sign. However, a card-check system, as has been pointed out, is particularly inappropriate in the context of the RCMP. We have a very hierarchical structure in which people have to rely on each other all the time.

Members of the RCMP may wish to discuss their political conviction in the context of that environment. They may feel comfortable doing so, and they may feel that their ability to work with their colleagues is not compromised by that. However, that should be their choice. The effect of having a card-check system for certification in this context would be that members might be forced to declare their union convictions through other members. This could have a negative effect, in certain cases, on the collegiality that is so important for the functioning of our national police force.

Therefore, why not simply ensure that members have the privacy they deserve? Why not ensure we have a guarantee of a secret ballot?

My friend from Esquimalt—Saanich—Sooke said something interesting. He said that the proposal for a secret ballot does not need to apply in this case because we are not talking about a public vote. He said that in a sense individuals could choose whether or not they want to join the organization and therefore there is no need for a secret ballot, if I understood what he was saying correctly.

Of course, it just needs to be said that we are talking about what would be a closed shop union. If the RCMP chose to certify, all members of the RCMP, even if they were individually not interested in being part of the union, would have to at least pay dues to the union. This is the process that exists. This is not analogous to simply whether or not an individual chooses to sign up with the local Rotary Club, or Elks, or something like that. This is a question of a whole professional group being brought into a union, potentially against the preferences of some of those members. This is more analogous to a general election in which we would respect and widely recognize the importance of a secret ballot.

Another comment that some members have made during this debate is that secret ballots reduce the rate of unionization. Frankly, that tips their hand a bit because the goal should not be to ensure the maximum level of unionization. The goal should be to ensure a fair process whereby workers can decide if they want to be part of a union. Of course, one could design a system, maybe a card check or something else, that would maximize the rates of certification, but if that happens at the expense of a fair and democratic process in which workers can actually express themselves, then that is not the best direction to go. The goal should be a fair process, and then we would let those who are involved in a fair process decide. A fair process in a democracy will produce the best outcome according to democratic principles, but if we do not have a fair process just because we want a particular outcome, that being higher rates of unionization, that is obviously hardly fair.

That deals with some of the strands in the debate today. I want to just mention what I see as the foundational motivating arguments for a secret ballot. Why do we generally accept that secret ballots are important? First, I think we all understand that people have a right to privacy with respect to their political opinions. Of course, people have the right to express their opinions on issues like certification and other issues, but they also have a right to not express their opinions, to not wish for their co-workers, their employees, even members of their family to know how they vote or how they feel about difficult political questions. This right to privacy really emanates from the idea of autonomy, the idea of self-ownership, that our political opinions are our own and therefore we have the right to decide if we wish to dispose of them in one particular way or another. This sense of the separation of the private space from the public space is foundational to our concept of liberal democracy. It is why we have a secret ballot.

Of course, the secret ballot ensures protection from reprisals. I talked before in the House on a previous bill about the history of secret ballots and how one time when we had public ballots people could be intimidated. They could face reprisals, or could lose employment as a result of how they voted in the then-public ballot. Thus we moved to a secret ballot.

Another reason we have secret ballots is protection against corruption. If we see how someone votes there is a greater risk of someone being offered an inducement. That cannot happen if there is a secret ballot.

Finally is the importance of a vote being preceded by deliberation. This is not possible in the context of a card check system, where someone might sign the card and then read an article or develop new information and think something different later on. One does not have the option of changing one's mind in a card check system but in a secret ballot process there is deliberation, debate, good discussion, and then individuals can come to their conclusions at the appropriate time.

For these reasons, despite some good aspects, I will have to oppose the bill unless the government accepts an amendment to respect the right of members of the RCMP to vote by a secret ballot.

Palliative Care

[Mark Strahl, Conservative, Chilliwack—Hope, BC]

Mr. Speaker, it is a pleasure to present a petition. It is very appropriate given that we are voting on Bill C-14 today.

The petitioners say that it is impossible for a person to give informed consent to assisted suicide or euthanasia if appropriate palliative care is unavailable to them.

They therefore call on Parliament to establish a national strategy on palliative care.

Framework on Palliative Care in Canada Act

[Marilyn Gladu, Conservative, Sarnia—Lambton, ON]

moved for leave to introduce Bill C-277, An Act providing for the development of a framework on palliative care in Canada.

Mr. Speaker, it is my pleasure to bring forward my private member's bill on palliative care. In the previous session of Parliament, a parliamentary committee of all parties looked at the issue and came forward with recommendations. The bill is the result of that. It is a timely bill, especially in light of the Bill C-14 legislation. The committee that considered the Carter report stated that the request for physician-assisted death could not be truly voluntary if the option of proper palliative care was not available to alleviate a person's suffering.

My bill provides a framework to implement consistent access for palliative care for all Canadians. I hope all parliamentarians on all sides of the House will support it.

(Motions deemed adopted, bill read the first time and printed)

Physician-Assisted Dying

[Murray Rankin, NDP, Victoria, BC]

Mr. Speaker, the problem with the minister's response is that the Alberta Court of Appeal, the Canadian Bar Association, Barreau du Québec, constitutional experts, and now even former Prime Minister Martin all agree, Bill C-14 in its present form is likely not constitutional.

Even if the bill is passed next week, it will be tied up in legal challenges for years to come, and costly, exhausting court battles for suffering Canadians who just want to see their legal rights vindicated.

Why will the government not do the right thing and work with us to get the bill right the first time?

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

Mr. Speaker, we are committed to moving forward with Bill C-14 and have engaged very broadly on this really complex and deeply personal issue.

We have a deadline of June 6 to meet that has been directed by the Supreme Court of Canada. We are committed to having in place, it is our responsibility as parliamentarians, a legal framework in this country that ensures we find the right balance between personal autonomy, protection of the vulnerable, and ensuring there is access in this country.

[Marjolaine Boutin-Sweet, NDP, Hochelaga, QC]

Mr. Speaker, more and more people are concerned about whether Bill C-14 on medical assistance in dying is constitutional.

On the weekend, we heard from some of the Liberal Party faithful, former prime minister Paul Martin, and former Liberal leader Bob Rae. The government cannot get such an important issue wrong. It is not too late. This evening, Bill C-14 can be amended.

Will the Liberals work with the opposition to ensure that Bill C-14 complies with the charter and the Supreme Court decision?

Criminal Code

[Daniel Blaikie, NDP, Elmwood—Transcona, MB]

Mr. Speaker, I know we have tried this before, but the third time is the charm. Given the importance of debate on this issue, it is important that we have another opportunity to extend it without affecting the timeline for the Supreme Court decision. Therefore, without moving the votes, we could extend debate on this.

Perhaps the government deputy House leader does not feel the same sense of urgency on this matter. He has been spearheading the movement against this motion today. He has spoken twice already, once at second reading and then at report stage, on this bill. However, other members have not spoken at all. They would appreciate that opportunity. I hope perhaps the deputy House leader has had time to call his boss and see if we can get a different answer this time.

The motion is: That notwithstanding any Standing Order or usual practice of the House, the time allocation order for Bill C-14, adopted on May 18, 2016, pursuant to Standing Order 78(3), be deemed amended to replace the words “not more than one further sitting day shall be allotted to the consideration of the report stage...of the bill” with the words “not more than two further sitting days shall be allotted to the consideration at report stage of the bill.”

[Mark Strahl, Conservative, Chilliwack—Hope, BC]

Mr. Speaker, those were very nice words, but I think it is time for action from that side of the House. We are where we are today. We can all play the blame game on why more members have not been able to speak, whether we should have sat until 3 o'clock in the morning, as the member said, or until midnight, or whether or not Motion No. 6, which has been withdrawn, was the answer to get this through.

We saw yesterday, in a spirit I would say of reconciliation, after the events that happened earlier this week, the government House leader withdraw his draconian motion, Motion No. 6, and promise to work with the opposition so that more members would have the opportunity to speak on Bill C-14.

The Liberals brought this bill on a Friday, which allows two hours of debate at report stage. There has been a very reasonable amendment to the motion put on the floor of this House to allow us to debate on Monday. It would not affect the timing of the votes or this bill proceeding to the Senate.

Why is the member opposing the opportunity for more members of Parliament to speak just on Monday? It would not affect the timing, the June 6 deadline, or the business of this House. Why not bring this back on Monday for another day of debate to give more members the opportunity to express themselves?

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Parliamentary Secretary to the Leader of the Government in the House of Commons]

Mr. Speaker, it is with pleasure that I rise to share a few thoughts in regard to the report stage of Bill C-14. Perhaps I can start off by picking up on a couple of the words that were just mentioned.

When we talk about the details, listening to many hours of debate in the chamber on this very important legislation, a couple of things come to mind. One is the seriousness of the debate, the sense of compassion we hear in many of the speeches. People want to identify with the legislation and best represent their constituents. It is one of the reasons it has become somewhat of a difficult issue to try to manage. To try to give a false impression would be most unfortunate. There has been a genuine, serious commitment by the Government of Canada to accommodate all members who would like to address the legislation. We have seen that on several occasions. It would have allowed all members to participate in the debate.

We all share two responsibilities. One is to recognize that the Supreme Court of Canada made a decision, and there is a void. I will provide some comment on that shortly. Second is that all political parties in the chamber have to take responsibility in the debate that has occurred on Bill C-14. Members need to ask themselves why they feel limited in their debate. On a number of occasions, the government has extended the opportunity to afford every member the opportunity to speak. I wanted to be very clear on that point.

When we talk about the issue itself, there is another thing about which we should be talking a great deal. We heard a lot of this during the second reading debate. We have far-reaching legislation that will impact, directly or indirectly, every Canadian in every region of our country. At the end of the day, we need to recognize that this is just one major step. It is a step that has been mandated because nine Supreme Court of Canada judges made the decision that we needed to get some form of framework set up to provide medical assistance in dying.

I believe this legislation delivers that. I recommend that members look at some of the words that have been spoken, in particular by the Minister of Health, and the Minister of Justice. They have done a phenomenal job in getting us to the stage we are at today. I would not want to underestimate the role that others have contributed. In particular, the members of the joint standing committee of the Senate and the House spent many hours in the early part of this year in consultations. I wish to recognize the many efforts of committee members, who after second reading had the opportunity to go through the legislation and look at the possibility of amendments, and number of amendments were brought forward. We saw consensus among all three political parties for some of those amendments, which is great to see.

It is important we recognize that some in the chamber advocate that this bill does not go far enough. Others advocate that it goes too far. I believe the legislation before us today is the best legislation we can develop, put forward, and turn into law. At the end of the day, Canadians from coast to coast to coast will be assured that it is solid legislation.

If we do not pass the legislation in a timely fashion to meet a deadline determined by the Supreme Court of Canada of June 6, there will be a void. Some have said that we can just ignore the void. They can have that opinion if they choose, but it is the responsibility of every parliamentarian to respect the Supreme Court of Canada's decision. If members do not respect that, we are putting at risk a patchwork system, depending in which part of our great nation we happen to live.

There will be additional issues in many different regions that will surface and many will have to spend, potentially, hundreds of thousands of dollars dealing with the legislation in a piecemeal fashion because we did not respect what we have been called upon to do by the Supreme Court of Canada. There is urgency.

We know that caring and compassionate Canadians in every region of the country want us to do our job. That is one of the reasons it did not matter to me if we sat until three or four o'clock in the morning or 11 o'clock at night. We wanted to ensure that members had the opportunity to express themselves. As we get closer to that deadline, we have to get the legislation into the Senate. We have many reasons to be optimistic that the Senate has taken on what I believe is a more independent outlook in terms its responsibilities. Hopefully we will see a very productive Senate in dealing with legislation that has been passed by the elected members who sit in the House.

We have an obligation to do the best job in dealing with this issue. That means we should look at getting this bill through not only at report stage but at third reading in a timely fashion so the Senate is able to deal with it. I look at a glass as being half full, not half empty. I hope the Senate will do the same and assist us in meeting the Supreme Court of Canada's deadline.

I want to emphasize that this is step one. There are many other steps. One of them is the issue of palliative care. I and many of my Liberal caucus colleagues as well as many other members of the House are looking at this. The Government of Canada has been very clear on a solid commitment in two ways.

First is the health care accord. The best way to deliver palliative care is through agreements with the provinces, I wish the Minister of Health the very best in achieving that health care accord.

The second is the financial commitment of billions of dollars from this government to provide strong leadership going into the future, ensuring that palliative care is a top priority of this government and working with the many stakeholders that play a critical role in this so we have the best palliative care system in the world. This government, the Prime Minister, myself, and many colleagues in the House want to achieve good quality, world-class palliative care.

[Peter Julian, NDP, New Westminster—Burnaby, BC]

Mr. Speaker, following on the comments of the member for Esquimalt—Saanich—Sooke on the issue of the timing on the debate, earlier I offered a unanimous consent motion that would allow us to debate this bill on Monday, which would not change in any way the time allocation vote that we have to have at the report stage of Bill C-14 on Monday evening.

Currently, in just a few minutes, we will stop debating this bill, but with this motion, if it is adopted by the government side, as opposition members are in favour, we would then have a second day of debate at report stage, which would be on Monday.

It is my hope that the government will actually work to do what is reasonable. It does not change the vote that we will have on Monday night on report stage on Bill C-14, but what it does do is it adds a second full day of debate and allows members of Parliament to speak on this important issue.

I will read the following motion for which I am seeking unanimous consent: That notwithstanding any Standing Order or usual practice of the House, the time allocation order for Bill C-14 adopted on May 18, 2016, pursuant to Standing Order 78(3) be deemed amended to replace the words “not more than one further sitting day shall be allotted to the consideration at report stage of the bill”, with the words “not more than two further sitting days shall be allotted to the consideration at report stage of the bill”.

I hope that we will get unanimous consent and allow a second day of debate on this important bill at report stage.

[Randall Garrison, NDP, Esquimalt—Saanich—Sooke, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I am very glad to have the opportunity to finally speak to the bill at report stage, although, as I just said in my previous question, I am really sad to have to do this under time allocation and knowing that many of my colleagues will not get the chance to bring the voices from their constituencies to this chamber on the bill.

I was prevented from speaking at second reading by the time allocation imposed by the government, but something even more peculiar happened when it did that. The abrupt change of the House schedule on May 4 with time allocation forced the second reading vote forward by five days, and for those of us who have responsibilities both here and in our ridings, it meant on that Wednesday morning, I was already flying west before the time allocation motion was introduced. It meant that I could not be here to cast my vote at second reading because I was already flying in the wrong direction.

I lost my chance to go on record as voting against Bill C-14 in principle. That is what I intended to do, not just because of my own experience and beliefs, but also because I believe it contradicts the Supreme Court's Carter decision, and most important, because the bill contradicts the opinion of virtually every person and every family in my riding that has contacted me about this issue.

I have been involved in discussions about end-of-life issues with several individuals who are facing severe debilitating and painful illnesses. I have talked to them directly. I have met with them and have heard their concerns. This reminds me to mention an important issue that is not in the bill, and that is the issue of palliative care and the need for us as a society to do a much better job with end-of-life care.

I do want to praise those who are actively already working in end-of-life care. This is not a criticism of their efforts that they make each and every day to provide better care for those who are facing end of life, but they are forced to do so too often with too few resources and in substandard situations.

I have been involved in public discussions locally on this issue, stretching back to a public forum on March 21, 2015, which was jointly sponsored by a group called Victoria Choices in Dying and Dying with Dignity. We heard from a panel of speakers, which I was privileged to be on, but we also heard from the public. We heard speaker after speaker at that forum say that they wanted the right to control end-of-life issues. They wanted the right to make decisions for themselves, and they wanted the right for their family members not to have to suffer intolerable pain for great lengths of time, but to be able to make the choice for assisted dying.

I believe, as I said, not just speaking on the basis of my own conscience, but representing the beliefs and needs of my community, that I should oppose Bill C-14, not just for what is not in the bill, like palliative care, which only gets a mention in the preamble and for which the government has, incidentally, provided no new resources and there is no reason to wait for legislation to do that, but I will oppose the bill for what is actually in the bill. I believe the bill is too restrictive and respects neither the letter nor the spirit of the Carter decision.

I think we are in this unfortunate position because the government failed to listen to the key recommendations of our own special joint committee of the House and Senate. The committee made very wise recommendations with regard to the bill, yet only a few of them were incorporated into the bill at the committee stage.

In the interests of time, I will focus on what I believe are the three key faults in Bill C-14.

The first and most important to me is the absence of a provision for advance directives.

I want to talk, if I am able to do so, about a very personal experience, the death of my mother last fall. My mother had always been very clear, even before she developed dementia, and that dementia began to take away her capacity, she did not want measures to keep her alive, lying in the bed without consciousness, with no quality of life, and especially if she were in great pain.

Her dementia was not the immediate cause of her death, so she would not have qualified under the bill because she did not have a terminal illness, but in her case, six years after the onset of the dementia, she no longer had the capacity to make decisions. Other medical conditions left her in a situation which she had feared: in great pain and unable to care for herself. Those other medical conditions did eventually take her life in conjunction with the decisions we as her children and the medical practitioner made at the time.

We feel very fortunate that my mother had been very clear about her wishes. Although that did not really make the decisions we had to make easy, we were confident that we were doing what she had wanted to do. My own family's experience and the experiences of other families in my constituency are why I believe so strongly that Canadians have the right to make advance directives about their care.

The second reason that I am opposing this bill is the fact that it would impose what it calls a reflection period on those at the end of life. Of course, again, those who have dementia or other similar medical conditions would not be able to have a reflection period because they would no longer have capacity. However, even for those who are competent at that point in their life, I believe that the 10 days, which the committee thankfully reduced it to, is still far too long for those who are living in intolerable pain, and far too long not just for them, but far too long to ask their families and friends to witness that suffering. If there is to be a reflection period, it needs to be even shorter than those 10 days.

My third reason for opposing this bill is the fact that it would narrow who is eligible to receive medical assistance in dying to those whose death is “reasonably foreseeable”. I know that others have said that we know what that means and it is specific. However, the only way I can understand that we all know what that means is that all our deaths are reasonably foreseeable, but what it means beyond that, I have no idea. It is not a term that is used in medicine. It is not a term that is used in law. That very ambiguity raises the spectre of excluding people who need medical assistance in dying and who would have been qualified for it under the Carter decision.

According to the lead counsel in the Carter case, even Kay Carter, a fierce advocate for the right to assisted death for those who are suffering intolerably but from a non-fatal condition, would probably be excluded from accessing medical assistance in dying under Bill C-14 as it stands. What this would do is force people into incredibly cruel strategies like starving themselves to death to make their death imminent and allow them to qualify. I would hope that this House would not impose those kinds of restrictions on people and make them make those kinds of choices at the end of their life.

Would I rather have this bill than no bill? The answer I guess I am going to have to decide on. My decision is going to be that yes, I would rather have no bill. I prefer to go with the Carter decision. Do I think it would have been better to have a bill? Yes I do. I am not opposed to having a bill on this, but it has to respect the Carter decision, and it has to have clear provisions in it, and it needs to have a reflection period shorter than 10 days. If we do not have the bill, what happens? We do not have a legal vacuum as people are saying. We have the Carter decision, which would provide guidance. There is a legal framework.

Although I did not actually look this up, when the abortion provisions were removed from the Criminal Code, the House of Commons tried twice to create new law regulating abortions. I am sure these same arguments were made at that time, saying that practitioners would not want to perform abortions because there was no legal framework. In fact, we went with the court decision. We still exist with the court decision on abortion as our legal framework and we have not had chaos in the medical community on that; not that in any way I wish to compare abortion to medical assistance in dying, but only on this issue of whether there is a legal framework that will apply on June 6.

The failure to meet the June 6 deadline for this legislation lies with all of us. It lies with the previous government; it lies with the current government, and it lies with us as a House of Commons. We all have to take responsibility for missing that deadline.

However, I do have to say I believe the government could have managed the House time better so that all of us could have participated in the debate and that debate could have been accomplished in time to meet the deadline. All the Liberals had to do was schedule this bill as a priority in this sitting of the House, which they failed to do. That did not happen. Therefore, I will, when the time comes, stand and vote against this bill at third reading. In the meantime, I will also vote against it at report stage.

[Kamal Khera, Liberal, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Health]

Mr. Speaker, it is an honour for me to rise today to speak in support of Bill C-14, an act to amend the Criminal Code and to make related amendments to other acts (medical assistance in dying).

I would like to start off by first acknowledging that medical assistance in dying is a deeply personal issue for all Canadians, which is tied to both their life experiences and personal beliefs. My background as a registered nurse in an oncology unit helped shape my thoughts and opinions on this matter.

Understanding that this is a very sensitive issue, with proponents on all sides of the debate, within days of this new Parliament, the now-government caucus moved swiftly to strike a joint committee to study the matter and make recommendations, which heard from many Canadians and experts on this issue. After working several days, sometimes well into the evening, the committee made its recommendations to Parliament.

Before I continue, I would like to thank all my hon. colleagues on both sides of the House, and in the Senate, who participated in the special committee and the justice committee for their contributions.

I also know that our minister has worked very hard to craft legislation that would ensure that the priorities of Canadians were met when it came to the issue of medical assistance in dying.

I strongly believe that the proposed legislation finds the perfect balance by reconciling the issue of autonomy of competent adults with the protection of vulnerable people through a thoughtful tailoring of the eligibility criteria and robust safeguards that are essential to preventing error and abuse. It also strikes the right balance by ensuring that conscience rights of physicians and nurse practitioners are protected, and commits to continuing to work with the provinces and territories regarding coordination and jurisdictional issues.

I want to assure members that our government is committed to continued discussions with the provinces and territories on a range of issues, not only related to medical assistance in dying but also to a full range of end-of-life options, including palliative care.

In various testimony given before the House committee, witnesses discussed other regimes where medical assistance in dying has been implemented. In Europe, for example, three countries have legislated access to medical assistance in dying, which is Belgium, the Netherlands, and Luxembourg. In the United States, four states have legislated access.

However, where Canada is unique is in the jurisdictional complexities that we face. In Canada, the federal government has exclusive jurisdiction over criminal law, and health is a shared jurisdiction between the federal, provincial, and territorial governments. Primary responsibility for the provision and delivery of health care services rests with individual jurisdictions. This is why our government has proposed legislation that will be applied across all provinces and territories but at the same time will respect and allow flexibility for jurisdictional roles and responsibilities in the areas of health care.

This brings me to another important issue that cannot be ignored or put aside when talking about enabling access to medical assistance in dying when one is approaching end-of-life care, and that is access to quality palliative care. It is very clear that Canadians are looking to their government for leadership to advance the availability and quality of palliative care within the broader scope of how we address Canadians' needs at the end of their life.

We know that most people at the end of life wish to remain at home as long as possible, as long as they are well supported by the services they need. This is why the federal government is committed to improving palliative care as part of a new health accord, supported by a long-term investment of $3 billion over four years.

Recently, federal, provincial, and territorial ministers of health agreed to work individually and collectively on improving home care to better meet the needs of patients closer to home. However, an agreement must still be reached on how funds will be used to strengthen and transform the health care system. We know that all jurisdictions are working diligently to meet the growing home and palliative care needs of their aging populations. However, we also know that jurisdictions are at different points. Some are well advanced in their efforts, and others are at a more moderate stage. By continuing to work with provinces, territories, and stakeholders, we will bolster each other's efforts for the benefit of all Canadians.

Another aspect that I would like to address when we talk about providing Canadians with that full range of options at the end of life is access. The government is very clear in its commitment to facilitate access to these services and to those providing it. This includes access to this new service of medical assistance in dying.

Our government is committed to respecting the autonomy of Canadians suffering from grievous and irremediable medical conditions. Access to medical assistance in dying would only be available for those who meet the following conditions: be a mentally competent adult who is in an advanced state of irreversible decline in capability; have a serious an incurable illness, disease, or disability, and are experiencing, enduring an intolerable suffering; and whose deaths are reasonably foreseeable.

It will also remain a crime to assist a person either in dying or in causing a person's death in situations other than lawful medical assistance in dying.

With regard to Bill C-14, our government is also committed to protecting the exercise of conscience rights as the proposed legislation also provides exemptions for both physicians and nurse practitioners from having to provide medical assistance in dying. Over the course of this national dialogue, we have seen that the protection of conscience rights for these providers is clearly an issue for many Canadians. Our government has listened and made Bill C-14 more explicit on this issue, and therefore more appropriate for the diversity within Canada.

The bill now reads as follows:

For greater certainty, nothing in this section compels an individual to provide or assist in providing medical assistance in dying.

We trust that this helps to address the concerns some of members may have either personally and/or on behalf of their constituents on the issue of the protection of conscience rights.

Our government is also proposing to work with provinces and territories to create an end-of-life care coordination system. This would have a dual function. It would respect the conscience rights of health care providers, while facilitating access for Canadians to not only medical assistance in dying but a full range of end-of-life options, including palliative care.

The federal government would be prepared to collaborate on developing such a system should provinces and territories wish to participate, so that all Canadians have access to the care they need and deserve. We could also start on this by reviewing the information that we have on assisted dying regimes in other countries to see what they have done, and assessing their applicability to Canada.

Working in the health care field and especially in oncology, I know that health care is about connecting and helping people during their most vulnerable times. This means that we need accountable and transparent regulations to monitor and instill confidence in the appropriate implementation of medical assistance in dying.

This will protect vulnerable patients when they may not be able to do so themselves and help Canadians understand the number of requests for medical assistance in dying, the types of medical conditions that lead to requests, and whether the procedural safeguards in the law are working as intended. It will also work to ensure that high-quality, comparable Canadian data is generated so that any future discussions about changes to the medical assistance in dying system can be based on the best possible evidence.

Therefore, Bill C-14 creates legal obligations for physicians, nurse practitioners, and pharmacists to report certain information for the purpose of monitoring. Regulations will be put in place to guide the information to be provided, to whom, and within what time frame. In the short term, Health Canada is working with our counterparts in the provinces and territories to establish an interim system should the bill be passed on June 6, until a permanent process is in place.

In closing, I would like to once again reaffirm my support for Bill C-14, which I believe is the right approach for medical assistance in dying. It will support and facilitate access for those seeking it, protect our most vulnerable, and protect conscience rights. We know that no one solution can reconcile the diverse perspectives on medical assistance in dying, but we believe we are moving forward together with a balanced approach that is appropriate for Canada at this time.

I thank the Speaker for giving me the opportunity to speak on this very important piece of legislation.

The House resumed consideration of Bill C-14, An Act to amend the Criminal Code and to make related amendments to other Acts (medical assistance in dying), as reported (with amendment) from the committee, and of the motions in Group No. 1.