Madam Speaker, I believe that at the beginning of his comments my hon. friend talked about what dignity is and said that dignity is up to the individual to decide. If you decide you have dignity, then you do, and perhaps if you decide you do not have dignity, then you do not. I find this definition rather troubling. First, there is no regime of assisted suicide proposed here or anywhere else that defines dignity in this wholly subjective way. It still tries to say that a person who has these physical or psychological symptoms can have dignity and someone without those symptoms cannot. It would seem that the typical understanding of dignity in this legislation and elsewhere does look for these external markers.
I liked what my colleague from Portneuf—Jacques-Cartier had to say yesterday about dignity being intrinsic to all human beings, because if we interpret dignity in the subjective way that the member has, I wonder where that leaves any efforts at suicide prevention. If a person said, regardless of his or her external circumstances, that he or she does not have dignity, then where does that leave efforts to tell that person that he or she does have intrinsic dignity and that he or she should not take his or her life? I wonder what the member thinks about the implications of his account of dignity for anyone in a difficult situation, anyone who might want to take his or her life.