Madam Speaker, I am honoured to participate in today's debate on such a core issue.
I would like to start by acknowledging the incredibly hard work and the non-partisan spirit of all of the members of the Standing Committee on Justice and Human Rights. I want to thank the deputy chairs, the hon. member for Provencher and the hon. member for Victoria, as well as the members of the committee, the hon. members for St. Albert—Edmonton, Niagara Falls, West Nova, St. Catharines, York South—Weston,Mississauga—Erin Mills, and Coquitlam—Port Coquitlam for their ability to work together in harmony. Even when we had an area where many people fundamentally disagreed and held true to very solid convictions, views and beliefs, we were able to work together in a non-partisan way and agree on 16 amendments to the bill before us.
It is true that not every member of our committee got everything they wanted. In fact, most of us did not get most of what we wanted, but what we did have was harmonious and agreeable debate, which should be an example to all of us in the House as to how parliamentarians should conduct themselves.
I now will talk about the bill itself, why I strongly support the adoption of the bill, and I want to put this in context. We are at a point where the Supreme Court delay is June 6. I will not attribute fault to anyone as to how we got here, but we only have a very short time to pass the bill. The hon. member previously asked why we would not ask the court for another delay. The court made it very clear, when we got our last four months delay of their original deadline, that it expected us to move forward and adopt legislation by June 6.
It does not mean that we could not ask again, but all of us should know that where the court ever grants a delay a second time, which is extremely unusual, it relates to an absolute inability of Parliament to get a law through. Therefore, I would ask everyone to consider what situation will we be in if we have no law on June 6? We will have no safeguards in place.
The current court decision that requires judicial review of an application for medically assisted dying will expire on June 6. This will mean that no waiting period will be required. There will be no requirement for independent witnesses to somebody requesting medically assisted death. There will be no requirement of a second opinion by a physician or a nurse practitioner that somebody meets the qualification of grievous and/or irremediable illness.
I would ask all of my colleagues on that side of the House, certainly within the Conservative Party, to consider the situation we will be in if we have no bill. It will not be a pretty situation. We will have absolutely no safeguards to ensure that those requesting medical assistance in dying truly have a grievous and/or irremediable medical condition. It is very serious.
I also want to talk about why we are here. My NDP colleague referred to the Alberta Court of Appeal. That explains to me all the more why we need safeguards and a law in place by June 6. We had a decision where a psychological patient who was not terminally ill, who had a short consultation with a psychiatrist lasting less than five minutes to evaluate her competence, was able to request medical assistance in dying and had it affirmed by the Court of Appeal. It is not true to say, as my colleague did, that it said the law was invalid. It was not looking at the current proposed law. It was looking at, and trying to interpret, the Carter decision by the Supreme Court the same way we all are.
My view is, as parliamentarians, we need to tell the court what principles we want to put forward, what safeguards we want to put forward so courts will look at the will of Parliament as opposed to doing what all of us are now trying to do and guess what the Supreme Court meant in the Carter decision.
I also want to point out that we should act cautiously here. Canada will only be the ninth jurisdiction in the world to allow medical assistance in dying. In the vast majority of these jurisdictions, the only people who can avail themselves of medical assistance in dying are people who are near the end of life, people in the U.S. who have six months to live, or people in Colombia who are near death. Only three jurisdictions in the world, the Netherlands, Belgium and Luxembourg, allow people to ask for their lives to be taken when they are not terminal.
The Supreme Court in Carter clearly contemplated a situation where we could not quite match section 7 and have section 7 compliance if we put in an end date. As a safeguard, we said that it had to be “reasonably foreseeable”. It is not perfect, but it is far better than having no requirement whatsoever that death be reasonably foreseeable.
In committee, we considered the things that were missing from the bill that we would have liked to have seen in it. By consensus, we added conscience rights for physicians, nurse practitioners, and pharmacists. We stated that under the bill nobody would be obliged to provide physician assistance in dying. In the preamble, we referred back to section 2 of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, which guarantees the freedom of religion and the freedom of conscience, to make it clear that we did not intend for anyone to be coerced into doing this.
We also added palliative care to the bill, which is important. I referred to this in my previous question.
We also inserted protections for people who might also be associated with the act, for example, social workers and therapists.
We required that death certificates include medical assistance in dying as being the reason for death as well as the primary cause of the disease that lead to that.
While everybody did not receive exactly what they wanted, we have a far better solution than what we otherwise might have had in this situation where we would have no legislation and no guidance to the courts on what Parliament truly wanted.
My NDP colleague talked about what happened in Quebec. I am a Quebec MP too. What happened in Quebec is completely different from what we are dealing with as federal legislators.
It took Quebec six years to reach a consensus on the medical side. However, our situation is different because a Supreme Court ruling tells us that a certain percentage of people have a constitutional right to suicide without state interference if they are in a particular physical condition. The federal government would be irresponsible if it did not meet the Supreme Court's deadline.
We do not have six years to craft this consensus. To be honest, I wish we had more time at the Standing Committee on Justice and Human Rights. We tried our best. We listened to over 40 witnesses. They told us many different things, because there are so many different views in Canadian society on this bill. We spent many hours on clause-by-clause. We considered over 100 amendments. We had three full days and nights of meetings. Had we had more time to work together as colleagues of all three parties to draft legislation like we were trying to do on the fly, we possibly could have done better. That does not mean, however, that after June 6 we cannot improve the bill.
One of the things we inserted in the bill was a requirement that the Minister of Health work on these studies, especially on advance directives, and this should start within six months.
We need to be cautious with respect to advance directives. There are only three countries that allow advance directives and two of them only allow them for somebody who is in an irreversible coma. The idea that we should suddenly allow medical directives in advance for dementia patients, without any proper review or safeguards or understanding of the issue, to me is faulty. We have the opportunity in the future to correct any flaws that we see now in the bill.
I will use my last 30 seconds to try to prevail upon my colleagues in the House. I am sure many of my colleagues wished the Supreme Court had never rendered the Carter decision, which would have left the House with more latitude, but we are where we are. There is going to be medically assisted dying in Canada after June 6. The only question is whether it will be with no safeguards, with doctors and nurse practitioners trying to interpret Carter, or will it be with the clear safeguards that we have in Bill C-14. For me, the clear safeguards in Bill C-14 are the far better choice.