I would like to start by acknowledging the leadership of both ministers in this very sensitive area.
I want to talk about a particular issue, and that is people who have a major physical disability, but who otherwise are in good health and who will not be able to avail themselves of medical aid in dying. Maybe I could ground this in a particular example. This was a story before Madam Justice Smith of the B.C. Supreme Court. It's the tragic story of a gentleman named Tony Nicklinson, who suffered a massive stroke in the prime of his life and was left with what's called “locked-in syndrome”. The only muscles in his body that he could move were his eyelids, and he managed to type out his affidavit by blinking. He was a person who otherwise was in good physical condition and would live a long time. In other words, he would not be the kind of person who under the law as drafted would be able to say that his natural death had become reasonably foreseeable at all. Sadly, Mr. Nicklinson starved himself to death because he was unable to use the services of physician-assisted dying.
Would you be open to amending the bill to allow people like Mr. Nicklinson to avail themselves of this service? The claim I make is that the Supreme Court of Canada did not require there to be a terminal illness as a condition for this service. This particular bill, as drafted, would not allow that service for people who were physically disabled, but otherwise in good health. If you accept that, and if you agree that the situation is really quite disturbing for people like Mr. Nicklinson, would you be willing to amend the bill to address that?