Mr. Speaker, what results from this bill is truly a matter of life and death. The decisions we make here always have some ripple effects on others, but this bill needs to be about protecting the rights of some of our most vulnerable.
It is from a place of deep conviction that I speak on Bill C-7. My hon. colleague for Thunder Bay—Rainy River echoed some of these concerns and convictions in a CBC article written by Kathleen Harris. He states:
I don't like voting against my party, but as someone with a medical background and somebody who has dealt with this issue over the years a lot, I think morally it's incumbent upon me to stand up when it comes to issues of health and life and death.
I find it heartbreaking that we are putting doctors and legislators in this position. As the member opposite suggests, the primary issue is protection of conscience rights for medical professionals, health care providers, and the rights of hospices and other institutions not wanting to cause the death of people in their care.
As a Maclean's editorial explains, many doctors who may be willing to expedite the natural process of dying, given their traditional role to relieve suffering, would likely be threatened by the qualitative and ethical distinction between hastening a death that is drawing near and ending a life that is expected to persist. This is a very valid point.
When one senator asked an expert witness whether it was true that medical professionals were leaving because of the lack of conscience rights, Dr. Leonie Herx replied that she knew of doctors who took early retirement for reasons of professional integrity or because of their own personal moral compass.
Do we want to harden the hearts of those who, because of their very own world view, cannot comply? These are people who feel that MAID is a betrayal of their professional commitment to save lives, a betrayal of their faith or a betrayal of their conscience.
A CBC article says it rather well:
Rather than instilling hope and helping to build resilience by focusing on options for living, health care providers will now be asked to discuss an early death.
Many helpful voices express serious reservation with this bill. Constitutional lawyer and author Don Hutchinson explains that this bill does not provide a sound structure and protection for all people, especially those living with disabilities, chronic pain or mental illness.
The executive vice-president of Inclusion Canada told us that for the disabled community, Bill C-7 is their worst nightmare. Their “biggest fear has always been that having a disability would become an acceptable reason for state-provided suicide.”
Colleagues may say that will never happen. Many of us never thought that we would be here debating same-day MAID, yet here we are. We are hearing stories that are happening today even with the current legislation.
Palliative care consultant Dr. Herx described the experience of Candice Lewis, “a 25-year-old woman with a developmental disability and chronic medical problems”. When she entered the ER, a doctor approached her mother and suggested that she consider MAID for her daughter. She refused. The doctor promptly told her she was being selfish.
The disabled community has made it very clear, time and again, that they have suffered at the hands of our current legislation and they feel directly targeted by this new MAID legislation, as no other community is directly referred to in the proposed amendments to the current legislation.
Despite the holes in the current legislation adopted in 2016, the government is pushing for a further expansion to the eligibility of MAID at an alarming pace. Krista Carr, executive vice-president of Inclusion Canada, explains that the community of Canadians with disabilities and their families have long feared that “having a disability would become an acceptable reason for state-provided suicide”.
According to the Council of Canadian Academies, without its reasonably foreseeable natural death provision, Canada would become more permissive with respect to medical assistance in dying than any other jurisdiction in the world.
There are also the voices of Lemmens and Krakowitz-Broker. They explain that, unlike in any other country in the world, the new bill fails to explicitly require that all reasonable options be made available and tried before allowing physicians to end a patient's life. Even when that decision for MAID is made, we absolutely need to reserve the right for people to have a change of heart.
Dr. Leonie Herx, the past president of the Canadian Society of Palliative Care Physicians and chair of the division of palliative medicine at Queen's University, sees life stories every day that show how people can change their minds with respect to MAID. She refers to one beloved patient who arrived at her clinic asking for MAID, but quickly abandoned his quest after being assured of his worth and that he was not a burden.
Recently, the member for Vancouver Granville asked the justice minister in the House why the 10-day reflection period and reconfirmation of consent were waived in this proposed new legislation. She said that the removal of these safeguards was not required by the Truchon decision: the ruling the Liberals chose not to appeal.
I noted the member's comments with great interest, given that she was the former justice minister who brought forward the original bill to legalize MAID in Canada, known as Bill C-14. In response to her questions and other critics, the current justice minister replied that the 10-day waiting period only increased suffering and that he had even heard of people who stopped taking their medications during this period.
Ensuring that all Canadians have access to care needs to be our top priority to address the needs of suffering Canadians. Death cannot, and should not, be the only choice to end excessive suffering. I have talked to many health care providers who say that we have the tools and resources here in Canada to alleviate all kinds of suffering, and even to alleviate the anxiety of individuals facing imminent death.
John Diefenbaker once said, “Freedom is the right to be wrong, not the right to do wrong.” Canadians value our right to think freely, to consider our thoughts and opinions, and to change our minds if we so choose. The elimination of the 10-day reflection period and the requirement to reconfirm consent takes this option away from those facing this difficult situation. How are we preserving the right for people to change their minds when we waive the waiting period? It would seem that this bill makes the choice for MAID to be final and irreversible.
That is not what is reported in the “First Annual Report on Medical Assistance in Dying in Canada, 2019”. It says that 3.6% of the patients who made a written request for MAID subsequently withdrew that request. While that may not seem like a very significant number, to put it into context 263 people out of the 7,336 people who completed written requests later chose to change their minds because they had the opportunity to do that in the 10-day waiting period. That is 263 lives. Every single one of them deserved the right and the freedom to make that decision. This piece of legislation before us would take that right away from individuals.
Experts speaking to the Senate committee on Bill C-7 discussed how, in the proposed bill, MAID eligibility would apply to treatable diseases where death was not imminent. This is also where the bill adds a 90-day assessment period. It is no wonder that people with disabilities or chronic illnesses feel threatened by this legislation. This addition is especially concerning when people are faced with a sudden, dramatic life-changing illness or disability, as it often takes much longer than three months to gain a renewed perspective.
It is no wonder the former health minister, Dr. Jane Philpott, and the member of Parliament for Vancouver Granville wrote an editorial for Maclean's urging Parliament to proceed with caution, and questioning whether there was enough medical and social evidence to even understand the implications of these potential changes.
Saying that we are at a defining moment in history by approving this bill without further amendments is not an overstatement. I am thankful for the opportunity to highlight these very real risks, and I want to urge the Liberal government to address the bill's serious challenges.
