Madam Speaker, it is my honour and privilege to join this debate today, though it is a sad one for me. I remember coming to this place. We passed Bill C-14 right off the get-go. It is where I cut my teeth in politics, I would say. At the time, we mentioned that this was a slippery slope. We had seen it in the Netherlands. Currently the government there is passing legislation to allow children under the age of 12 to be euthanized. They are working with what's called the Groningen protocol, where it is not the individual but a group of doctors making the decision as to who gets to live and who gets to die. Here, we saw that this erosion of protection began virtually as the ink was drying on the original bill. We have seen the government not uphold the wishes of this Parliament. We have seen a junior court strike down the law, calling it unconstitutional.
This is where I have some frustration. The ink was not even dry on the bill when it was being challenged in the courts. It had just passed through the House of Commons. It is incumbent upon the executive branch of government to defend the decisions of this place, whether the government agrees with a court or not, and this was a brand new law that had just been thoroughly discussed in this place. We had worked hard for the amendments. For the government to abandon all the work we had done and decide that a junior court decision stood and that it was not going to appeal it to a higher court, like the Supreme Court, was an abdication of the executive branch's responsibility, and I definitely want to acknowledge my frustration that the government did not appeal this court decision.
That said, this bill is much broader than the court decision, and I would argue that we continue down the slippery slope. When Bill C-14 was introduced, I remember talking about the slippery slope and being assured it was not a thing. Yet here we are, removing safeguards from the bill.
This bill definitely makes two classes of Canadians. Across the country, we see a big emphasis on suicide prevention. Every level of government in this country has suicide prevention strategies. We see community groups getting together to run hotlines. Facebook has a warning system to help folks who are considering suicide. Facebook will even identify them and notify people who are close to them that their friend is not feeling well. The American military has worked with Facebook as well, to identify veterans who are considering suicide. We see throughout Canadian society that there is very much a focus on preventing suicide.
Where does that comes into play in this bill? It would create two levels of Canadians. In one case, there are able-bodied, otherwise healthy people suffering from mental illness who are considering suicide. All of those suicide-prevention apparatuses come to their aid. We even have bridges in this country that have nets to catch people in case they jump. All of that stuff comes to the aid of those particular people. However, for sick people who have a grievous and irremediable condition, that stuff is optional and they can request death. They can go to their doctor and say they are not feeling well and are suffering, and that their grievous and irremediable condition has affected their mental health and they are having suicidal thoughts. Then suddenly they are eligible for assisted suicide.
This creates two classes of people. If they are otherwise healthy, suicide prevention is granted to them; if they have an underlying grievous and irremediable condition, they are eligible for, as the government likes to call it, medical assistance in dying or assisted suicide. That is what this bill would do.
Prior to this bill, there was a requirement that a person's death be reasonably foreseeable. I remember that when we were discussing this, we found it to be kind of nebulous. What did that mean? There was no timeline on it. I remember we said that for a death to be reasonably foreseeable, it would have to be in six months or within a year. Those were amendments we brought forward. The government did not go for them back then. Now we see the courts are taking that off and the government is not even defending it. That is definitely one of the concerns we have. We are creating two classes of citizens: one for which suicide prevention is available and one for which it is optional.
The other thing I want to talk about is an amendment we brought to the original bill, one that I think would be an improvement on this bill. It is the need for video verification. In the current rendition of the bill, the timelines have been reduced or eliminated altogether, from the time of the request to the time when MAID is administered. There is a concern that family members may not be convinced that their loved one requested MAID and that they were giving consent at the moment thereof. There has been a suggestion by some groups that there be a video recording of the administration of MAID. That is an amendment I would seek at committee. We would definitely like to see something like this.
Lastly, we would like to see the government work to enhance assistance in living. With COVID, many of our old folks in seniors care facilities are not able to see their loved ones because of restrictions on movements and not being able to travel. The military had to be called in to deal with some of the situations. We talk a lot in this place about dying with dignity, but maybe it is time that we started focusing on living with dignity, having a dignified life, taking care of our elders and being part of a family.
I have talked to folks who have been working in the old folks homes lately and it has been a rough job. They say the loneliness is a major issue in old folks homes these days. The loneliness leads to mental health issues, and if those mental health issues are not addressed, people will become suicidal and will request MAID for loneliness. Is that what we really want in this country? Assistance in living is something we have to be concerned about.
This also deals with palliative care. Palliative care is something the government pays lip service to. We have called for national strategies on this. We have called for money to be put into it. In the absence of palliative care, there is no real choice. There is no ability for somebody to say that this is what they are choosing. Palliative care is an acknowledgement that while there is, humanly speaking, nothing more we can do, we can make a person comfortable and allow them to be surrounded by friends and family as they leave this earth. We would very much like to see the government pursue a significant improvement in palliative care, rather than allowing the elderly members of our families to vanish into an old folks home, where we are not allowed to visit them at this point, to die of loneliness and be offered MAID as the first available option.
This bill has many concerns. It is the first evidence of the slippery slope that is happening in the euthanasia debate, and I definitely wanted to raise that concern. I am also concerned that this bill creates two classes of citizens, as I clearly outlined. I am looking forward to the government making some amendments to the bill and look forward to being able to participate in those discussions at committee.