Mr. Speaker, I listened intently to the member. I appreciate her heartfelt comments. We work together on veterans committee.
I would like to talk to her about that dynamic specifically here. The bill states that the patient's death no longer must be “reasonably foreseeable” but requires patients to still have a “grievous and irremediable medical condition”.
The member and I appreciate our veterans but we are deeply concerned about the number of them who are choosing to end their lives because they do not feel well when they come back home. It is antithetical to try to prevent them from taking their own lives and yet telling them this is an opportunity to do so.
My father had Alzheimer's and passed away two and a half weeks ago. When he was barely able to still control his thoughts, he looked at my mom and his words were, “Will you take care of me?”. That was nine years ago. The palliative care he had, the love that he had in that circumstance I cannot imagine, even though he was down to nothing, not honouring the fact of life and death in that circumstance the way it was.