Madam Speaker, I would also like to wish you, as well as the table officers, pages and everyone who works in this building, happy holidays.
[Member spoke in Portuguese as follows:]
Feliz Natal!
It is with great pleasure that I speak to Bill C-7, an act to amend the Criminal Code in relation to medical assistance in dying. First, I want to express my sincere gratitude to the members of the Standing Committee on Justice and Human Rights for their excellent work on this difficult matter and to all the witnesses who appeared before the committee and for their compelling testimony.
Unfortunately, the Conservatives have made it clear that they are not interested in improving the bill. They want to stop it from moving forward, all this while people continue to suffer across the country. In creating this important piece of legislation, we consulted with over 300,000 Canadians, including key stakeholders. At every opportunity we acknowledged that this was a complex and personal issue, and that we would respect the different views of parliamentarians and Canadians.
During these consultations I engaged with many disability advocates and experts who participated in most of the 10 round tables I hosted across the country in January and February, along with my colleagues, the Minister of Health and the Minister of Employment, Workforce Development and Disability Inclusion.
Two of the engagements I was involved with focused exclusively on the disabilities community, one in Vancouver at a round table with disabilities groups and another forum in Ottawa organized by the Canadian Association for Community Living, now Inclusion Canada, and the Council of Canadians with Disabilities in January, entitled End of Life, Equality and Disability: A National Forum on Medical Assistance in Dying.
During these consultations our government heard the voices of individuals with disabilities and degenerative illnesses who shared their perspectives and concerns, including those who believe that limiting medical assistance in dying to those who are dying is a violation of their rights and self-determination. These were individuals like Mr. Truchon and Madam Gladu, who initiated legal proceedings alleging that being precluded from accessing MAID violated their charter rights and deprived them of their preferred way of responding to intolerable suffering. Also Julia Lamb in Vancouver said quite clearly that she spoke for herself and that the leadership of the disability community did not speak for her.
We respect those voices from the disability community, which are as diverse as any community. These interventions had a direct impact on the structure of the legislation, including the non-end-of-life regime with additional safeguards as well as the substantive safeguards themselves, which affirm autonomy but balance safeguards for people who may have been in a vulnerable position. We heard those voices and we incorporated it into the very legislation that we proposed.
We also heard a clear consensus during the consultations that the additional 10-day reflection period—