Madam Speaker, I thank my friend for his speech and for the work he did as chair of the justice committee. Of course we do not always agree, but I thought he was a very fair-minded and very effective chair of that committee. I want to commend him for the work he did.
Now, listening to his speech, it sounded as if he was motivating the idea of a terminal requirement within the legislation, or a requirement for imminent natural death, and yet the provisions that the government is defending, the language “reasonably foreseeable” is not at all clearly pointing us to terminal or to some kind of imminent situation.
I proposed an amendment at report stage, as he knows, that inserted the word “imminent”, and I believe he and all of his colleagues on that side of that House voted against adding that kind of clarity to the bill.
It seems to me that there is a bit of a disconnect between some of the very real issues and concerns he raises with there not being an imminent requirement, and yet the government's opposition to in any way clarifying that imminence is what reasonably foreseeable means. Without that clarification, that is not what it means.