When it comes to decisions as personal as our own death, it seems to me that the Crown has no right to decide on behalf of the patient, since it's not the Crown's life that's at stake. The Crown's role is to create the ideal conditions for freedom of choice. Since the law guarantees the principle of self-determination from our birth to our death, how can we disregard the principle of self-determination at the most personal time of life, namely the end? It's a fundamental principle.
No one has the right either to make a decision about one person's quality of life by comparing it to another's quality of life. That's another principle. So it's up to the individual, the patient, alone to ultimately make decisions about their quality of life, about what they consider to be tolerable.
Sandra Demontigny told us that she would cut her life short if we as lawmakers did not allow her to do it. This is, in fact, the spirit of Carter and of Justice Baudouin's ruling: it violates the right to life because people will tend to want to cut their lives short rather than stay alive as long as they can. I don't know anyone suffering from an illness who doesn't want to stay alive as long as they can.
So what these individuals are asking of all Canadians is that we guarantee that, on the morning they wake up and decide that life is no longer tolerable, we will let them seek help to pass on. It seems to me that it's a perfectly acceptable moral contract. It is a kind, benevolent contract, because you can't be benevolent if you're taking away someone's autonomy. These are the principles that are ultimately guiding my understanding of this debate.
What hurts in the debate we're having is the fact that a person may lose their capacity to give consent in a degenerative process. However, Bill C‑7 removed the final consent requirement for those in the terminal phase of life. It's all very clear, so I don't see why we wouldn't respect a person's final wishes. We must strive to create the ideal conditions for ensuring respect for those wishes.
With this in mind, Dr. Wiebe, what can we do to ensure that those wishes are respected and that we can somehow cast aside, circumvent or dismiss the doubts we're seeing surface this morning?