Madam Speaker, the funny thing is that people have been saying it is the only solution for 50 years now. Why is it that some hospitals still do not provide palliative care because there is a shortage of units?
Nowadays, in some hospitals, people who request medical assistance in dying cannot experience that end-of-life journey in a palliative care unit, even though palliative care is supposed to be end-of-life care and relief from pain and suffering in an environment that supports human dignity. How is that possible?
We must not think of palliative care and MAID as being mutually exclusive. It is a continuum of care that should be available to these patients. Those who are not terminally ill, for whom the dying process has not already begun and is not irreversible, are also entitled to a suitable environment. Bill C-7 makes that possible, and much more clearly than Bill C-14 did.
That was not possible under Bill C-14, with its unassailable reasonably foreseeable natural death criterion, which the court said undermined patients' right to life.