moved for leave to introduce Bill C-260, An Act to amend the Criminal Code (medical assistance in dying — protection against coercion).
Mr. Speaker, today I am tabling an act to prevent coercion of persons who are not seeking medical assistance in dying: to stand with people with disabilities, veterans, the elderly and all people who have faced or are at risk of facing pressure and coercion with respect to a medically facilitated death. As I do so, I want to honour the memory of Clemens von Galen. His heroic defence of the most vulnerable people, especially in fighting involuntary euthanasia, is my example.
The new bill would prevent government bureaucrats from pushing a medically facilitated death on people who are not asking for it. It would not apply to doctors and nurses, nor in any case where the patient or client has sought the information.
However, Canadians with disabilities, veterans, the elderly and people living in poverty do not want government bureaucrats telling them, when they are trying to access unrelated government services, that they should die. Canadian law envisioned that these sensitive conversations would happen between a medical expert and a willing patient, not between a bureaucrat and a citizen who is not interested, yet bureaucrats have pushed medically facilitated death on unwilling citizens again and again. This bill would have absolutely no effect on individuals who are seeking a medically facilitated death; it is for those who are not.
This is a common-sense reform that would fill a gap in the law. I hope all my colleagues will get behind it.
(Motions deemed adopted, bill read the first time and printed)