I was completely paralyzed and intubated. This is very important. I had tubes in my nose going to my lungs, and because my lungs had essentially collapsed—I didn't have a diaphragm helping me breathe like everyone else—I was on a machine for about three months, fully conscious, but getting phlegm sucked out of my lungs minute after minute, hour after hour, day after day, week after week, month after month.
There is no pain medication that can deal with that. It is terrifying. It is impossible to sleep. You think you're going to go mad. You can't talk to anyone. You're experiencing massive amounts of pain, such that your head wants to explode, but you can't do a thing about it. I call it “well-intentioned torture”. That's what they were doing.
When I was finally able to breathe and speak, two things happened. I had my family gather around. I told my mom and my dad—my dad is with me tonight—and my brother and sister that I loved them more than anything. Then I asked them to get my lawyer. I did not want to ever go through that again. The lawyer advised me that what I was asking was probably illegal, but I wanted it written down anyway, just in case. That was 20 years ago.
Let's fast forward. Sue Rodriguez is an example of a person who all the resources in the world cannot help at the end. I know that. I had experienced that. I was going to get better, and I was 23. I didn't believe the doctor's prognosis anyway, until much later, but Sue Rodriguez was going to drown, hopeless, in pain and in terror. She was denied what everyone in this room would want: an end to the suffering.
I've long been an advocate of the empowerment of the individual, personal autonomy, and having the government stay out people's lives as much as possible. I've written extensively on this issue. I've written articles across this country. Even The Economist magazine has asked for submissions. In fact, I have a book here called Master of My Fate. I can't distribute it because it's not translated, but you will find it in your mailboxes. It goes through the whole political saga.
I will skip that other than to say that you will have in front of you three private members' bills, two that I introduced and one that Nancy Ruth and Larry Campbell introduced in the Senate. The first bill deals with amending the Criminal Code. It's about five pages, and it has some of the safeguards that you would like to consider, I think. The second bill includes a panel, or some sort of review board, to check for best practices. After five years, say, it would report to Parliament. It would collect empirical evidence to find out why people are making the requests and what we can do to empower people so that they choose life. But we also have to recognize that sometimes people will choose death. In fact the Hippocratic oath recognizes that, if you read it.
The response to the bills in Parliament was deafeningly quiet. Harold's laughing, because he knows that everyone was.... It wasn't a good place to be—except all the media, virtually across the country, left-wing and right-wing, accepted it; talk-show radio, TV shows. It turned out that over 80% of Canadians supported physician-assisted death, even in the disabled community. The response I received through email was overwhelming. I had thousands of emails from people telling me their most personal details.
Let's go to today. What is central in all of this is that the individual must be a Canadian or permanent resident, must be 18 or older, and must be cognitive. Don't make it complicated. That's it. Those are the criteria. All you have to do is cut and paste that part of the decision into the Criminal Code.
I agree completely with CCD that we should provide the resources, and increase the resources, so that people do choose life, but again, there are situations where all the resources in the world won't matter. I think that's why a lot of people in the disabled community at large do support physician-assisted death. But I would ask those in the disabled community with reservations about this to be more empathetic to the people who are suffering. Having someone suffer, starving themselves to death, or being in pain or in terrible suffering, down the hall or down the street at the seniors residence or in a hospital or at home, having them live in pain and terror—it doesn't make my life better as a Canadian with a disability. It just makes me sad.
You have to recognize that people suffer, and to impose our view or for any group to impose any view on anyone else is un-Canadian and, I would say, unconstitutional, because doing so infringes on freedom, liberty, and the ability for self-determination.
With regard to doctors, I've heard a lot of testimony from doctors on how this is going to be tough love.
To the doctors and the medical profession, I say be professional, be tough. It's not about you. It's not about the medical profession. It's about the individual and his or her choices. If the person is a cognitive adult, why on earth would we impose our views on what their quality of life is on them? I'm not talking about someone with a bad hair day. There is obviously going to have to be some reason, and common sense needs to be applied.
Having the committee bring forward legislation really makes me concerned, because anything that comes from Ottawa is bound to fail when it comes to the cross-jurisdictional issues of criminal law and health care. I would suggest that the committee stay as close to the Carter decision as possible and allow the provinces to determine their own fates. That is what's happening already with Quebec. In fact, Quebec has to go further. They have to amend the law to provide for more circumstances.
Last, on the issue of advance care directives, after this four-month period is up, I think there will be a paradigm shift in what is allowed in a living [Technical difficulty—Editor]. I think people need to be empowered to say that in 20 years from now if they have dementia or these things or they end up in a terrible car accident or whatever, and they so choose, then they would not want to live. I can go on. I'll give you the book.
Ladies and gentlemen, Invictus, the famous poem, says, “I am the master of my fate: I am the captain of my soul”. Let's move forward with hope, compassion, empathy, and mercy.