Madam Speaker, I am pleased to rise to speak on Bill C-7, an act to amend the Criminal Code respecting medical assistance in dying.
At the outset, I will say that the subject of medical assistance in dying is perhaps one of the most complex issues that could come before Parliament. Profound moral, legal and ethical questions are raised. Medical assistance in dying raises questions of individual autonomy, the need to respect the sanctity of life and the need to protect vulnerable persons, among other considerations.
It is no wonder that Canadians have such profound, deeply held and diverse views on this subject matter. After all, when we are talking about physician-assisted dying, we are talking about issues that literally concern life and death. When we, as parliamentarians, give consideration to an appropriate framework that provides safeguards, we must do so with regard to the fact that we are talking about a procedure that, when carried out, is irreversible. The patient dies. It is indeed a weighty subject of profound importance.
I am certainly informed of the complexity of the issue through my experience of having, in the last Parliament, served as the vice-chair of the Special Joint Committee on Physician-Assisted Dying. This committee was tasked with reviewing the Carter decision of the Supreme Court, which struck down the blanket Criminal Code prohibition and tasked Parliament and the committee with putting forward recommendations for a legislative response. I then sat on the justice committee, which studied Bill C-14, the government's legislative response. In that regard, I am in the unique position of having been through the process from start to finish, from the study of the Carter decision of the special joint committee through to the passage of Bill C-14 in June 2016.
The bill before us purportedly responds to the Truchon decision of the Superior Court of Quebec, which struck down an important component of Bill C-14, namely, that in order to qualify for medical assistance in dying, one's death must be reasonably foreseeable. When the Truchon decision was issued in September 2019, we on this side of the House in the official opposition called on the Attorney General to do the right thing and appeal the decision. We did this for a number of reasons.
To begin with, it is the responsibility of the Attorney General to uphold laws passed by Parliament. The law passed by Parliament was Bill C-14. I would note that the law had been passed a mere three years prior to the issuance of the Truchon decision. It was passed after a comprehensive review of the Carter decision and a comprehensive review of possibilities for a legislative framework. Therefore, in the end, Bill C-14 was a carefully thought-out and debated piece of legislation. One would think that in the face of that, the minister would have appealed the decision.
In addition to that, when one, having respect for this place and the laws passed by Parliament, actually looks at the Truchon decision and the reasoning of Madam Justice Baudouin, it should be all the more apparent the need to appeal the decision. Madam Justice Baudouin, in concluding that the reasonable foreseeability criterion contravened section 7 and section 15 of the charter, was driven, arguably, by a restrictive interpretation of the purpose of the law. Indeed, Madam Justice Baudouin reached her conclusion by singularly focusing on one objective of the law, namely, to protect vulnerable persons from being induced in a moment of weakness to ending their life.
However, that was not the only objective of the legislation. When one looks at the preamble of Bill C-7, it expressly provides for other objectives, including the sanctity of life, the dignity of the elderly and disabled, and suicide prevention, yet the judge in Truchon focused exclusively on only one of those objectives.
What Parliament sought to do in providing for a reasonably foreseeable criterion was to respond to what the Supreme Court called upon Parliament to do, namely, to strike a balance between individual autonomy and the need to respect vulnerable persons.
The Attorney General, moments ago, stood in this place and said that the government chose not to appeal the decision because it agreed with the substance of the decision. That is quite interesting because only four years ago, three years before the minister decided not to appeal the decision, ministers on that side of the House emphasized how critical the reasonably foreseeable criterion is to provide and ensure effective safeguards to protect the most vulnerable.
To that end I would quote the former health minister, Jane Philpott, who, on June 16, 2016 stated:
We are concerned with the Senate's recommendation for the removal of the clause that recommends that this be considered only in the face of natural death being reasonably foreseeable because of the fact that people with mental illness, among others, would not be adequately protected.
Then there are the comments of the then attorney general, the hon. member for Vancouver Granville, who introduced Bill C-14 and stated:
There are other compelling reasons for there to be a requirement that the person's natural death be reasonably foreseeable. First, it provides a fair way to restrict eligibility without making assisted dying available to almost everyone. Second, restricting eligibility in this way is necessary to protect the vulnerable.
In the face of those objectives, it is quite a departure and quite convenient for the minister to say that he was going to effectively abdicate his responsibility as attorney general to uphold the laws passed by Parliament by allowing a single decision of a single lower court judge in one province of this country to stand. The Attorney General acknowledged, and we should make no mistake about it, that the effect of Truchon and its codification, by way of this piece of legislation, significantly transforms the medical assistance in dying framework in Canada.
At the time of the Carter decision and when this House, four short years ago, debated Bill C-14, medical assistance in dying was thought to be an exception to the rule, not the rule. It was thought to be appropriate in certain circumstances in an end-of-life context, where one who was suffering intolerably could, upon providing clear consent, hasten their death.
With this legislation, it would now be appropriate to terminate human life even in the absence of a terminal illness and even in circumstances where the suffering is medically manageable. That is a radical transformation, and it creates a number of complexities around issues of suffering that might be psychological or existential and outside of an end-of-life context. When one removes the reasonably foreseeable criterion, all that is left is that one must have a serious disease, illness or disability, be in state of decline, and be suffering physically or psychologically as a result.
When one removes an end-of-life, or reasonably foreseeable, component, that already arguably subjective test becomes a whole lot more subjective, and that has the potential to put vulnerable persons' lives at risk. One can see that with those broad parameters, persons with degenerative disabilities could have their lives terminated, notwithstanding that they may have years, if not decades, to live. That has caused enormous concern in the disability community across Canada.
One month after the Truchon decision was issued, some 72 organizations from across Canada, representing a cross-section of the disability community, wrote to the Attorney General and pleaded with him to appeal the Truchon decision. They did so out of concern that persons with disabilities could be put at risk and have their lives prematurely ended.
The writers of the letter noted that the legislation could arguably contravene article 10 of the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, which provides that persons with disabilities should be treated equally under the law. They note that persons with disabilities could be treated unequally because one could have medical assistance in dying made available to them for no other reason than they happen to be disabled.
It should be noted that the UN rapporteur on the rights of persons with disabilities sounded the alarm when she said she was, “extremely concerned about the implementation of the legislation on medical assistance in dying from a disability perspective.” From a disability perspective, that plea fell on deaf ears on the part of the Attorney General in terms of his failure to appeal the Truchon decision.
In light of what a significant change this legislation means, it is unfortunate that it has come to this, because appealing the decision would have allowed for time. It would have allowed time for Parliament to take into consideration the significant complexities associated with this change, a mere four years after Parliament had legislated a comprehensive regime, and it would have provided clarity in terms of informing Parliament about the scope of the framework upon which Parliament can legislate.
However, instead of taking the appropriate time to ensure that any legislative change respects the charter, because respecting the charter, including life, means protecting vulnerable persons, we are here with a profoundly significant piece of legislation being rushed. It is being rushed in the face of the expiration of the stay on the declaration of constitutional invalidity, effective this December.
While the Attorney General and the government emphasized the Truchon decision, it must be noted that this legislation goes well beyond the scope of Truchon. It removes important safeguards, including the 10-day reflection period. It removes the requirement that there be two witnesses to confirm that a person made the request of their own free will and that the request reflected their true consent. It provides for a complex advanced consent regime, one of those complex areas when it comes to medical assistance in dying policy, and it does all of this pre-empting what Parliament had determined, called upon and legislated in Bill C-14; namely, a legislative review that was supposed to take place this spring, but is not going ahead.
Now we are in this rushed process, instead of having an opportunity for members of Parliament to come together to hear from expert witnesses, to review the state of the law, to give consideration to the comprehensive reports of the Council of Canadian Academies and to receive diverse feedback on all of these issues. It need not have been this way. It should not have been this way, and it is regrettable that the government has so recklessly put us in this position by rushing through legislation that, arguably, could put vulnerable Canadians at risk and remove critical safeguards.
