Thank you very much, Hugh.
My name is Amy Hasbrouck, and I'm the director of Toujours Vivant—Not Dead Yet, and I'm also here in my capacity as vice-president of the Euthanasia Prevention Coalition. I've been a disability rights activist for over 30 years, and I've worked on this issue, opposing euthanasia and assisted suicide, for 20 years. I was a lawyer in the United States and I have worked in health law and mental health law as well.
My major concern about this law is that it does not provide access to palliative care, while it provides access to death on demand. Palliative care is what people need to answer the question, “Why am I suffering?” Most surveys in which people are asked if they want palliative care, people say yes, but people are often confusing the concepts of palliative care and medical aid in dying. When people are asking for death, they're asking for help. Not providing adequate palliative care—which is the case in this country, where only about 30% of people have access to palliative care—means that people are dying needlessly. We should put the horse before the cart and put the palliative care before the death.
I have submitted proposed amendments, in English and in French, that would address that. You can read them at your leisure.
The second concern I have is that in the Carter case, the court expressed very specific concern about vulnerable persons, and not wanting vulnerable persons who might be induced to commit suicide in a time of weakness to be victimized by this law. Yet, there's no provision in this statute, other than some nice words in the preamble, to protect people who are vulnerable. That is the subject of some other amendments that I have included in my submission.
Third, the safeguard section includes several subjective criteria against which physicians and nurses would determine whether somebody was eligible for assisted suicide. That kind of subjective determination might not be such a problem but for the fact that most medical professionals view a disabled person's quality of life as being lower than a disabled person does. This kind of disability discrimination is rampant in the health care system, and when someone's quality of life is underestimated, the idea comes straight to mind that the person might be better off dead. I don't know a disabled person, myself included, who's never been told that they'd be better off dead. That kind of thinking is really what's at the bottom of this law, that non-disabled people fear so much being disabled, fear so much, as Mr. Smith said, being incontinent, that they would rather be dead.
These are the kinds of things we are battling against, using small amendments to try to rectify the language in the face of this law, a law that is going to go into effect, and that is going to present some worse depredations. Our concern and our hope is that some of the priorities could be changed so that palliative care and vulnerability assessments become part of the law and that judicial oversight provides more structured and more effective guardianship over the lives of people with disabilities who are subject to these laws.
Thank you.