Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.
Good evening, everyone.
I would propose to vote against our colleagues' amendment for the following reason.
Bill 52, passed by the Quebec National Assembly, clearly defines the issue and to whom it pertains. I remind you that the Quebec experience is based on six years of detailed and painstaking work under three different governments and three different premiers. I know what I'm talking about because I was there. I think that my colleague from the Bloc Québécois was also there for some of the work. He may have arrived a bit later, but he is still a former colleague from the National Assembly I salute.
Back then, in Quebec, we were careful to thoroughly define the issue in question to avoid the lack of clarity that kind of treatment could involve. We understand full well that the matter is extremely delicate, as we are literally talking about a life or death situation. Quebec's experience was very painstaking in terms of that. We still have concerns over some of the provisions, especially paragraph (d), lines 31 and 32, where it says, “their natural death has become reasonably foreseeable”.
I had an opportunity to say that this expression, which is actually very hard to remember, was overly vague in our opinion. In Quebec, we defined this issue clearly by referring to “end-of-life care”. We may be able to come back to this, but I wanted to review the situation in light of the Quebec experience. It's better to have clear guidelines instead of vague statements that may leave room for interpretation and even some rather unfortunate situations.