Madam Speaker, I would first like to thank the Minister of Health for sharing her time with me. This clearly demonstrates that she believes in fair play and democracy, since she knows that I am opposed to the motion and the bill.
That being said, I am wondering how I will say everything I have to say in 10 minutes.
I will begin with the heart of the issue. The premise of the fundamental debate relates to our understanding of the principle of self-determination. Here are the main questions that the Department of Justice and the two ministers should have asked themselves. Why and on what grounds would we take away people's right to self-determination throughout their lives? When, even in urgent medical situations, no medical intervention can happen without a patient's free and informed consent, why and on what grounds would we take away people's right to self-determination at a time when they are enduring intolerable suffering, when they are about to die, when they are their most vulnerable?
The government says that it is in order to strike a balance, but that has never been proven, and the Supreme Court thought it was futile. Had it been referred to the Supreme Court, the bill would have been amended and considered unconstitutional. I imagine that is why the bill was never referred to the Supreme Court. It said that three rights had been violated by the total prohibition.
If we carefully study the Morgentaler ruling, we see that the court agreed to strike down the law that allowed abortions under certain conditions on the basis of just one right: the pregnant woman's right to security of the person. How can anyone seriously believe that the security of the person who is enduring intolerable suffering from a grievous and irremediable illness, disease, or disability would be protected by section 1 of the charter, which states that any limits must be reasonable in a free and democratic society?
It is quite unreasonable for a person who is among the most vulnerable in our society, the one who is suffering, to have to bear the burden of proving to the courts that he or she meets this criterion of reasonably foreseeable natural death or, as we saw recently, to have to go on a hunger strike in an attempt to meet the criterion.
I remind members that this criterion discriminates on the basis of age. The motion states “...to guard against death being seen as a solution to all forms of suffering, and to counter negative perceptions about the quality of life of persons who are elderly, ill or disabled...”. Whose negative perceptions? Where are these negative perceptions coming from, exactly? As far as I know, when someone has a degenerative disease, and this will come as no surprise to the Minister of Health, medical practitioners follow their patients' cases.
Is she assuming that medical practitioners, doctors, nurses, and health care professionals have a bias against their patients because of their age or social condition? Is she assuming that health care professionals have bad intentions?
If they have bad intentions, we should get rid of them. This rationale shows a bias against health care workers. Is she saying that seniors need to be protected from the people who care for them? This bill is a bad cut-and-paste version of the Quebec law.
We were able to move somewhat quickly here because Quebec has already gone through this, and its focus was the area of palliative care. Quebec achieved an amazing feat by not pitting euthanasia against palliative care and by ensuring that patients have access to a wide range of palliative care options.
Why would the bill limit itself to this one aspect or even to a degenerative disease like ALS? The idea is that death is reasonably foreseeable in this case, and this is where there is discrimination among degenerative diseases.
Who are we to pass judgment on someone's quality of life? It is not up to the doctor to pass judgment on a patient's quality of life or compare one life to another. These are basic principles of ethics.
We trust the health care workers who provide care, and obviously, they will see their patient's quality of life change over the course of a year. If the patient says he cannot take it anymore, the request can be made.
Quebec's law is not a response to the Supreme Court's directive. Why? Because the Carter decision came afterward. Quebec's lawmakers sought to comply with the Criminal Code and respect each authority's prerogative in its own jurisdiction.
Now we have the Carter decision and this bad bill. Quebec's minister of health and social services was right when he told his doctors that this approach is unworkable and asked them to be prudent because this government lacked the courage to respond when the Supreme Court ordered us to create a framework for assisted suicide.
I read the motion and asked the minister a question today. The government is rejecting Senator Joyal's amendments, which are also those of the Bloc Québécois, the Green Party, and the NDP, who are calling for the elimination of this utterly vague criterion and a return to the terms in Carter, to what really matters for people who have a grievous and irremediable health condition that causes them persistent and intolerable suffering.
The motion says we struck the right balance and want to reject these amendments “to recognize the significant and continuing public health issue of suicide”. What is that all about? No one working in suicide intervention would ever confuse the two states.
As far as I know, a suicidal state is reversible. It is not irremediable, but indeed remediable. There are treatments for suicide. However, something like Alzheimer's is irremediable, as far as I know. Such is the confusion that was created here this morning, and the argument that was made.
That is the only argument that the Department of Justice is going to make at the Supreme Court and patients will have the burden of going to court in order to have access to medical assistance in dying. I will weigh my words carefully and say that I find that to be indecent.