Mr. Speaker, I am very pleased to rise in the House today to speak in support of C-316, an act to amend the Canada Revenue Agency Act (organ donors). I am also proud to be one of its seconders.
I want to begin by thanking and commending the member for Calgary Confederation for his work in preparing this bill and helping to do two things: one to help Parliament, the government, and Canadians who engage in an important conversation about organ donating; and also to suggest a way to improve the lives of people so that more people can inherit that gift of life through organ transplants.
This is no less than a matter of life and death. As a United Church of Canada minister, I have had the privilege of helping families in the most difficult times of their lives. Those times have involved people who have lost loved ones, often tragically and unexpectedly, who were searching for solace and meaning in the face of often unspeakable grief. I have also worked with individuals who were waiting for life-saving, or life improving, surgery that involved receiving an organ or tissue from either a living person or one who had just died, but whose organs could go on living in their body, giving them a second chance at living a full life.
I do have a bias on this topic. I am unabashedly in favour of finding ways to open the conversation about organ donation and finding ways to make it as easy as possible for this to happen across our country.
An organ donation is called the gift of life. However, for me there are two gifts happening simultaneously. One, obviously for the recipient, whose life may be well saved by the donation, but also another, the gift for the donor and their family. In my experience, the donor and his or her family often receive as much, or even more, benefit from the organ donation. For the family, it often helps to make sense and give meaning in the midst of a tragic loss.
I was 11 years old when Dr. Christiaan Barnard performed the world's first human-to-human heart transplant in Cape Town, South Africa. I can still remember watching the news that night and being absolutely overwhelmed at that possibility. He transplanted the heart of Denise Darvall, who had died from a head injury, into the chest of Louis Washkansky. While he only lived for 18 days following the surgery, he regained consciousness and taught his medical team important lessons about the immune system and anti-rejection drugs. The second patient, whose transplant happened 50 years ago this year, lived for nineteen months, and opened up the possibility for heart patients around the world to have hope for a healthy, happy, full and long life.
We have come a long way since then. Modem medicine now allows for transplantation of organs including the heart, kidneys, liver, lungs, pancreas, intestine, skin and thymus. Tissues that may be transplanted include bones, tendons, muscles, corneas, heart valves and veins. Medicine continues to grow and offer life-changing opportunities for people suffering from many afflictions. To change lives, it takes the willingness of people to donate their organs or tissue, and it takes systems that facilitate that in the most humane and efficient ways possible.
This bill quite simply would amend the Canada Revenue Agency Act to authorize the Canada Revenue Agency to enter into an agreement with a province or a territory regarding the collection and disclosure of information required for establishing or maintaining an organ donor registry in that province or territory.
During the other speeches I double-checked my own status. I first checked my Ontario licence to see if I was a donor, and it was not there. Then I checked my health card, only because I was prompted when I got to the website for the Ontario government. It is not an easy process. An easier process is to check a box when we are filing our income tax return. It is not difficult.
Our government recognizes the value of organ and tissue donation and transplantation, establishing leading practices, strengthening professional education and raising awareness. We have invested money with Canadian Blood Services and in research as well, but more can be done. This is quite a simple way to expand the gift of life, to get better health outcomes. I encourage all members to support sending this bill to committee, where it can be both studied and perhaps even improved.
My hope is that the committee will recognize that provinces and territories could use help to register consent for organ and tissue donation, especially organ and tissue donation after death, post-mortem, at a time when it is easy to do. Believe it or not, doing taxes is not that hard. It is not that stressful.
People can take that moment when they are filing their taxes and take just a second to check the box and do it. However, being the kind of person I am, I want to push even a bit further to ask whether that is the only place the federal government can help. Perhaps the committee could consider in all respects where Service Canada encounters Canadians, such as when people get a passport, which is surely less stressful than filing income taxes. The committee has some work to do on this bill. I support it fully and I suspect that we will be able to find a way for the federal government to efficiently and humanely help people make this decision in a timely way.
Ensuring that we register advance directives is critical. It is one way to relieve the pressure on a family. In an emergency room when a family is dealing with a life-and-death situation when someone has been brought in after a car accident and the family is told at that moment that the person they perhaps loved the most in the world is dead or is about to die, and they are being asked to give permission for organ donation, it is a confusing time. As a pastor, I have often stepped in to help families when physicians or nurses are trying to remain neutral. My job as a pastor is to help them deal with that death, and I know that one way to deal with it is to make sure that life comes out of darkness and death. That is the way we can do it, by helping a family. If we can avoid having to do it at that time of urgent care in a hospital when someone has died and someone else is facing a tragic decision, then we should do it. It is a matter of life and death and we have the power. We do not often, in the House, get to save lives. We are not first responders. In this bill, we have a chance to save lives and we should take it. Ensuring that there is a safe, good, efficient way to register advance directives is part of our mandate as members of this House of Commons, and this bill would accomplish that.
We all have stories about this. A couple of years ago, I read a story that came out of a school shooting during a wave of violence. This particular story happened in Paducah, Kentucky. Several children died in a school shooting. Afterward, a reporter asked the mother of one of the little girls who had been shot what her thoughts had been as she raced to the hospital. She said she kept praying over and over again, “Lord, let my daughter live.” The reporter continued, “What happened when you found out that your daughter was dead?” The mother responded, “I started praying they would be able to use her organs so that others could live.” Indeed, that came about. What happened was that this little girl's heart was given to a man who desperately needed a transplant. Months later, the mother went to see him. She was introduced to the man and asked for one thing: Could she put her head against his chest to hear her daughter's heart beating again? This act was a gift to both families. It was a gift to a mother who had lost a daughter and a gift to a man who had new life: a little girl's heart beating and beating and beating.
In the House, we have a chance to make that kind of a difference. We can send this bill to committee, we can make sure it gets passed and we can save a life.