Madam Speaker, we are here to respond to what the Supreme Court of Canada has done in this situation, and what we have done is that we have established a legal framework with this legislation.
With respect to the other issue, let us not underestimate just how important the different stakeholders are, such as our health care professionals, who understand the importance of palliative care. We only need to go to a patient inside a hospital or go into a personal care home facility, or other institutions, private facilities, homes, and so forth, and what we will find is that there is an immense amount of dedication to assisting people in dying in the best way they can.
What the legislation would ultimately do is establish a very basic framework that would assist people in doing something that I believe is really important. I speak of that not only from my personal experience, with respect to the passings of my father and grandmother when I was at their bedsides, but also from the consultations that I have had over the last number of months and I would even suggest years, going well back into the 1990s, if we factor in the importance of palliative care. At one point I used to be the health care critic for the Province of Manitoba, and I can say that Canadians are genuinely concerned and want to see further collaboration from the different levels of government to ensure that we have the best palliative care.
As the Prime Minister has said, the great discussion on this issue has not ended today. Rather, it will be ongoing as we all try to do the very best in dealing with this very important issue to all of us.