Thank you.
The last time I spoke in front of the Senate about MAID, the arguments that I, along with Dr. Naheed Dosani, Gabrielle Peters and many others, posed were that disabled people who were suffering because of systemic failures due to systemic ableism would be negatively impacted by this expansion.
People who are living in abject poverty, who are scared to enter our horrendous long-term care institutions, who were on wait-lists for treatments or who couldn't see a reason for living because of the lack of accessible affordable housing would use this expanded MAID as their only option. I spoke about Chris Gladders the last time I was here, a man from Hamilton, Ontario, who used MAID because he was left sitting in his feces and urine for days at his long-term care home.
Elected officials, you gaslit us for months stating that it was impossible for people to use MAID in these ways due to safeguards. You implied that the rights of people like Nicole Gladu, who testified that she wanted the choice to die with a champagne glass in her hand, was more important than the need to protect folks I spoke about who were being systemically coerced into—