Madam Speaker, there is no doubt, having learned from the prior debates on this bill and again this evening, that this is an extremely difficult issue for all of us to confront as parliamentarians.
It is a private member's bill, so it will be a free vote for all members of Parliament, and all of us as individual members of Parliament must make our decisions. I know most of my caucus are opposed to the bill at this time, but there are certainly other members who, in good conscience, will vote in favour of it.
That division in attitudes comes from a philosophical basis, from a religious basis and from a moral basis on both sides of the issue. I have taken a somewhat different approach in my opposition, because I am opposed at this time. I cannot rule out that at some point, our Canadian society should in fact have a provision that would exempt this type of death from the Criminal Code's definition of murder, but we are not there today. I am quite convinced of that. In all good conscience, again for my colleague from the Bloc, I have serious problems with the methodology in the bill. I will come back to that if I have enough time at the end.
My approach is one simply of analyzing where we are as a society, both in Canada and at a somewhat more extended level, in some of the countries and jurisdictions that have introduced the concept of assisted suicide in whatever form or methodology they have done it. In terms of all the work I have done on this, I have come very definitely to the conclusion that it would be premature for Canadian society, at this time, to move down this road. Again, we may never move down this road, but we certainly should not at this time, for two primary reasons.
First, it is quite clear that as a society, we do not have the medical professionals ready, trained and equipped to deal with pain control. One studies the curriculum in medical schools and the position that doctors take when they are out of medical school and practising, whether they are general practitioners or specialists. It is quite clear that the knowledge out there on pain control has nowhere near permeated 100% of our medical profession.
I say this from a good deal of experience in my own community. I believe we have the best hospice in the country. I think it is 25 years old now. One of the programs we instituted about four years ago, or a bit longer, was a mentoring process by a pain specialist, who is now retired. She conducted a mentoring program, funded by the provincial government, for general practitioners. We now have put about 30 general practitioners through that process, educating them. These doctors are practising, some for a good deal of time, but they have to learn, for the sake and benefit of their patients, how to control their pain. It has been very successful.
The director of our hospice tells me that she does not get requests for assisted suicide. This woman has worked in this field for over 20 years in the Windsor area. The hospice is able to provide them with the resources, the pain control and sometimes the setting, so it is not necessary for individuals to have to make that decision of ending their own lives earlier than what would naturally occur. They are able to do that, yet still have full dignity of living out their lives to the fullest, both in time and in quality of life.
The other reason I believe this is premature is we do not have anywhere near the services in palliative care in hospices that we should have. The statistics I have on this show quite clearly that only about 20% of the regions are fully covered by full palliative care in hospices. We have perhaps another 15% or maybe 20% where we have partial coverage. We have a long way to go, and we should be concentrating on that.
I must admit I get to be critical of the government. One thing that happened, not in this current budget but in the two budgets before that, was the money to assist in setting standards for those palliative care centres and hospices was cut. There is no money left in the federal budget for the type of research and the setting of standards that would help the provinces in those areas.
We need to finish building the infrastructure before we move to considering whether we are going to have assisted suicide. We then need to look at other jurisdictions. What has happened there is not what I think we see in the common viewpoint of the average Canadian.
The average Canadian thinks the person who will have an assisted suicide is the stereotypical sufferer of Lou Gehrig's disease, that type of debilitating and terminal illness, those people who near the end of their lives will be unable to do anything to end their lives themselves and so they need assistance. That is the image out there. That is what shows up in the opinion polls.
If we study every jurisdiction that has moved to assisted suicide, that is not the person who is primarily using the system. It is almost overwhelmingly, and I am talking very high percentages, 75%, 80%, 85% of the cases, the frail elderly and, in some cases, younger people suffering from severe disabilities. It is not someone suffering from Lou Gehrig's disease.
Until we are in a position to complete the building of the medical infrastructure that we need to support patients, we cannot go down this road. We have to think about the unintended consequences every time we pass legislation, and this is certainly a classic example of where we end up with an unintended circumstance. We think what we are doing is helping a patient, a citizen of our country, but what we are doing is severely terminating lives of this much larger group in the form of the frail elderly.
Again, I have looked at all the jurisdictions, of which I am aware, where they have legislation. We heard from my Conservative colleague about the minister who moved the legislation through the Parliament in Holland. In 2009 the minister went public, supporting exactly the position I set forth before Parliament tonight. She recognized they did not have anywhere near a full system of palliative care in Holland. She has recognized, by the statistics that are coming out now, that it is the frail elderly who are overwhelming being euthanized. It is not what was intended. This was a consequence that resulted. She has made it quite clear that if faced with the decision today, she would not have marshalled that legislation through her legislature until that system was built.
This is not an easy issue, but it is very clear to me that the bill is so premature. We are at a stage in our development of our society where we can build the rest of that system. It will require some additional financial resources, but it is not great and we can afford to do it. That is what we should do and put off this type of legislation for quite some time into the future, if ever.