Good morning.
I'm Krista Carr, executive vice-president of Inclusion Canada, formerly the Canadian Association for Community Living, Canada's national organization for people with intellectual disabilities and their families.
Inclusion Canada has advocated for safeguards in MAID since we intervened in the Carter case. Our biggest fear has always been that having a disability would become an acceptable reason for state-provided suicide. Bill C-7 is our worst nightmare.
Inclusion Canada stands united with all national disabled persons organizations in calling for MAID to be restricted to the end of life. The disability community is appalled that Bill C-7 would allow people with a disability to have their lives ended when they are suffering but not dying. This is not how we respond to the suffering of any other group of Canadians, much less any other charter-protected group.
We're told that this abrupt pace of passage through Parliament has been set by the Superior Court of Québec, yet amending the Criminal Code to satisfy a superior court decision appears unprecedented. We're told Canadians want this, yet every national disability organization is opposed.
If Canadians supported assisted suicide for being indigenous or a member of the LGBTQ2S+ citizens, for example, who are suffering as a result of being indigenous or because of their gender identity, we would not be here today. Canadians recognize that suicide is more prevalent amongst those who experience systemic racism or societal devaluation. Thus, prevention is a necessity, and every life lost is a tragedy. Why is it not just as great a tragedy for an indigenous person with a disability or someone with any other identity who has a disability? I hope you will hear from indigenous organizations as part of this committee.
The human rights of a charter-protected group must never be a matter of public opinion. Equating assisted suicide to an equality right is a moral affront.
There are three points I'd like to cover.
First, why us? As no other charter-protected Canadian life is being put at risk by this bill, there is only one answer to this question: that the lives of Canadians with disabilities are not of equal value. Language and perceptions are powerful. Including disability as a condition warranting assisted suicide equates to declaring some lives as not worth living, a historically horrific premise with consequences that should terrify us all, and that clearly terrify the disability community and their families.
Second, people with an intellectual disability and their families are in a constant struggle for inclusion, a universal human right not yet realized in Canada. When people with intellectual disabilities suffer because of their pervasive exclusion and marginalization, families now fear that their family members will be encouraged to end their lives. Rather than addressing their suffering, as we do for every other Canadian who tries to end their suffering through suicide, their lives are now judged as not worth saving.
To be clear, inclusive life remains elusive for the majority of adults with intellectual disabilities. There is no right to adequate supports in Canada. Seventy-five per cent of adults with an intellectual disability are unemployed. They are four times more likely to be living in poverty, and four times more likely to experience violence. Also, a staggering amount of people with an intellectual disability remain housed in institutions and long-term care facilities.
Canada is failing its commitments under the UNCRPD to uphold the rights and inherent dignity of all people with disabilities. Persons with disabilities in Canada suffer an inadequate patchwork of supports, with extensive wait-lists for services. A state-sanctioned death is not the solution.
Third, and lastly, until now, MAID has been restricted to end of life. The end-of-life requirement was the only safeguard whereby disability was not the sole criterion. By having a disability itself under Bill C-7 as the justification for the termination of life, the very essence of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms would be shattered. Discrimination on the basis of disability would once again be entrenched in Canadian law.
People with disabilities have been historically devalued and marginalized in Canada, and that remains to be sufficiently remedied. Bill C-7 further devalues the lives of people with disabilities and fundamentally changes MAID from physician-assisted dying near the end of life to physician-assisted suicide on the basis of disability. The lives of people with disabilities are as necessary to the integrity of the human family as any other dimension of humanity, and this threat to the lives of people with disabilities is a threat to us all.
We urge the committee to seek an amendment to MAID to sustain MAID as available only to those who are dying and unequivocally restrict anyone with a disability from having their life ended unless their natural death is imminent.
Thank you.