Madam Speaker, I will be sharing my time with my esteemed colleague from Argenteuil—La Petite-Nation.
It is with great emotion that I rise in the House to speak to the bill on medical assistance in dying.
First, this bill is the result of a decision handed down by the Superior Court of Quebec. I am very familiar with that court. I had the great honour and responsibility of arguing cases before it in my previous life. Barreau du Québec lawyers have the privilege of working with one of the best courts in the world.
This court rendered a decision and rather than appealing it, the Liberal government said yes. Quebec will once again be leading the way for the rest of the country. Our progressive and forward-looking Quebec will guide Canada. That makes me proud both as a lawyer and a federal government MP from Quebec.
The purpose of Bill C-7 is to ensure that people like Ms. Gladu and Mr. Truchon have the same rights, opportunities and freedoms as those who are facing an imminent or reasonably foreseeable death.
The ruling in Truchon found the eligibility criteria of reasonably foreseeable natural death to be unconstitutional. Our government also agrees that MAID should be available to relieve suffering and pain from serious medical conditions and is now proposing through this legislation to amend the Criminal Code so that Canadians can end their lives with medical assistance if that is the right choice for them. To accomplish this, Bill C-7 proposes to repeal the requirement that natural death be reasonably foreseeable, opening up access to those who are suffering in a wider set of circumstances.
The changes to the legislation propose to create two pathways in terms of the procedures that must be followed to assess a request for medical assistance in dying. While I do not have time to get into the details of the two regimes in full, there are a number of points that I wish to highlight today.
For those people who are suffering intolerably from a serious medical condition, but whose death is not reasonably foreseeable, the safeguards put in place emphasize the importance of ensuring that sufficient time is taken to evaluate the request. A minimum of 90 days will be needed so that the person can be assessed by a doctor who has some experience with this condition, which will help to ensure that the person gets all of the information, services and tools that might help them improve their quality of life.
Bill C-7 also creates new safeguards with respect to consent. Individuals requesting an assessment for medical assistance in dying give their consent, of course. Clearly, they also give their consent to receive MAID when they officially sign their request. However, what matters most is consent when MAID is about to be administered. There must be no doubt as to the person's desire to receive MAID at the moment they receive it. Doctors will be more comfortable proceeding under those circumstances.
Depending on their illness, some individuals risk losing their capacity to give consent between the time they are approved for MAID and the day they would like to receive it. Although we expect that most people are ready for MAID rather quickly once their request is approved, some people may wish to wait for a specific event such as a child's wedding or the birth of a grandchild. Those who wish to wait before going ahead with MAID are caught in an impossible situation if there is the risk of losing capacity. Either they wait for their special family event and risk losing their ability to die as they wish, or they move up the date of the intervention and miss a very important moment with their family and friends.
Therefore, this bill will enable individuals in real danger of losing their capacity to consent prior to the day specified for administration of MAID to make special arrangements with their practitioner. Such arrangements must be made in writing. The doctor and the individual must work together to come to an agreement that works for both of them. This safeguard is important for individuals as well as for doctors because they are the ones who bear the tremendous burden of ending someone's life.
The bill addresses another difficult situation.
Let us suppose that, when the day comes, the person has lost their capacity to consent to MAID, but remains conscious and alert, although not competent. Let us also suppose that they act in such a way or make gestures clearly indicating that they do not want to receive MAID. The bill addresses this situation—which we obviously hope will be rare—by clearly stating that the physician must not proceed because, in this case, it is no longer what the person wants.
The concept of freedom of choice, for me, remains central to all of this. I watched my grandmother suffer from Alzheimer's. Not long after I was born she was diagnosed, and when I was very young she used to repeat the same stories over and over again to me, about her own life and the life lessons that she wanted to pass on. She would tell me about how she used to work two and then three jobs, taking shifts overnight in order to buy her family's first home and provide a better life for her children. What that repetition instilled in me was certainly an understanding that my grandmother was probably the strongest woman I knew, that she was a force of nature.
When I was about seven or eight she forgot who I was, she forgot who everybody was, and I had to very painfully remind her every time I saw her. By the time I was 10 she no longer remembered language at all, and it was just humming, which I still somehow found very soothing, comforting and somehow okay. The degradation from there continued; her eyes no longer opened at all, she was in a wheelchair, the humming had completely stopped and when I was 15 the only muscles that worked were reflexive ones. Even if nothing else in her body moved, she would chew food if it was put into her mouth. It took two people to move her from her wheelchair to her bed or to change her, and this situation went on like this for 10 years.
As a teenager I used to wonder constantly what it would feel like to be trapped in a body like that, wondering if that was really the same strong woman in there or not. It was 10 years of listening to hushed voices in the kitchen saying, “...but there's nothing we can do.”
I do not know for sure, of course, what my grandmother would have decided for herself, but I do know for sure what I would want. For those who would decide something different for themselves, or for whom their beliefs are contrary to assisted dying, this framework provides everyone with the freedom to decide for themselves.
It is not a crime under the Criminal Code to take one's own life. It is a crime to take someone else's. The changes proposed would ensure that those people who need and who would like doctors to help them in order to end their life with dignity, at the time that they choose, can do so.
MAID is certainly one of the most challenging social issues in our society, which is made up of people with very diverse viewpoints and needs. I believe that this bill would achieve the right balance between the freedoms and rights of those who are dying and who are seeking a peaceful medically assisted death and our medical practitioners who need a clear framework for timing and consent.
I call on all members of this House to support Bill C-7.