Okay.
My Conservative colleagues surprise me. It's a good idea to propose a general study on mental health. First, health care falls under the jurisdiction of the provinces, including Quebec. Mental health falls under Quebec's jurisdiction. We don't have to wonder how Quebec manages mental health.
However, we're the people who must change the Criminal Code or say that mental health will never be included in the medical assistance in dying issue. There will be no access to medical assistance in dying. This falls under our jurisdiction. It's a specific and current issue. Regardless of whether the issue is included in the bill, and it may not be, what problems upfront related to mental health would make us, as legislators, say that we won't extend medical assistance in dying to mental health?
It seems that we can and should conduct this study, instead of saying that we'll talk about mental health in general and then see. What are you trying to address or accomplish by conducting a study on mental health?
If someone tells me what will be done with this very broad study on mental health, what we're looking for, and what we want to demonstrate, with the limited time that we have for our work, I'm ready to listen. However, it seems that, with the motion that has just been introduced, we're losing a great opportunity to hear from experts, people and patients who would tell us what they think of the proposal to extend medical assistance in dying to mental health, and why it would be advisable or inadvisable. My motion doesn't say that we want to extend medical assistance in dying. It proposes that we look at why it would be advisable or inadvisable to do so.
I need to know this, regardless of whether the issue is included in the bill. I've heard that the issue wasn't included. Can anyone here tell me why? I think that we need to hear from people. This is a great opportunity to talk about mental health in a specific way. That's why I wrote this motion in a very specific way. This doesn't mean, if you want to demonstrate something else in mental health, that I'm not open to doing so. However, we would then need another motion.
I'm convinced that, since the issue concerns the final moments in the life of a person suffering from mental illness, everything that we're looking for in terms of the adequacy or inadequacy and accessibility or inaccessibility of mental health care will come out of our study on the extension of medical assistance in dying to mental health.