Obviously I have no idea who is advising the government and what's motivating the government, but to be very candid about this, I'm dismayed that I have to be here. We fought a very long, hard, expensive battle on this issue, and we were successful. For reasons that just baffle me, the government lawyers or the government advisers seem to fail to acknowledge or come to grips with the fact that the Carter decision allows all grievous and irremediably ill people, irrespective of whether their death is foreseeable, to avail themselves of physician-assisted dying.
What I think has happened—and it's so regrettable—is that the government has somehow become captured by the rhetoric of the disabled rights organizations. Their rhetoric is that all physically disabled people are presumptively and irrebuttably presumptively vulnerable and that they're incapable of ever making their own decision as to when their suffering is intolerable.
They take that position because many disabled people—and I am one of them—have managed to tolerate and adapt to their suffering and choose life over death. But to suggest that all physically disabled people have to subscribe to that notion is not only patronizing but infantilizing; it's treating all physically disabled people as children, incapable of agency and autonomy. I find that incredibly offensive. The trial judge did; the Supreme Court of Canada did. I don't get why this government doesn't understand that.