Well, I don't know what those words mean. When I spoke to the minister last week on this, I said that it was reasonably foreseeable that I would be back in my office within an hour, and it was also reasonably foreseeable that I would be dead in 50 years. That's a huge time frame, and I don't think doctors are going to be comfortable with seeing something as “reasonably foreseeable”. I don't like that language, and I think we should take that out of the bill.
One of the senses I'm getting from this whole hearing, though, is that many of the arguments that are being put before the committee are the very same arguments that were put before the courts in British Columbia and Canada, and the arguments were found wanting. Having lost the battle, if you like, with Carter, the case is trying to be retried here in front of a parliamentary committee, and I simply don't like that. I think we already have had a judicial body give due thought and consideration to these matters, and it has passed a 9-0 decision, and now we have people trying to undo that and to place a huge burden on the suffering Canadians who are going to have to go to judicial reviews at great cost to themselves and families, with huge time delays.
As I mentioned, just yesterday the Attorney General of British Columbia intervened, and a woman who was seeking death now has to wait for a court adjournment, an open-ended court adjournment. This is not a good thing to happen when you're at the end of your life and suffering grievously and irremediably and you have to fight the Attorney General and the Government of British Columbia and have an adjournment in your case. I think this is cruel and unusual punishment for individuals.
I think we need to have an easy way for Canadians to express their autonomous wishes to have a timely and painless death, because, after all, suicide is legal in this country. We're not talking about an illegal act here. We're talking about giving Canadians autonomy over ending their lives at a time and a choosing that they want.