Mr. Speaker, first, the notion that there is homogeneity with respect to persons with disabilities on this issue is far from the truth. The Senate's sponsor of the bill is a woman with a disability who supports the initiative of the government, as does a former minister in the Conservative government of Stephen Harper, a gentleman named Steven Fletcher.
Second, hopefully the unfortunate insinuation will not be left on the record that somehow appointments by the current Prime Minister to the Senate are doing work as an end run around what the government's position had been all along. What the Senate is actually doing is taking a sober second thought, as it is constitutionally charged to do.
My question for the member is this. The notion that the Senate amendments are being taken on holus-bolus is inaccurate. What is being contemplated is with respect to taking the mental illness exclusion from 18 months to 24 months for the sunset. Within those 24 months, there would be within one year a task force of experts charged with providing recommendations about how this could be done appropriately, and there would be a further 12 months for Parliament to consider how to do so and whether to do so.
Do those kinds of safeguards address the concerns that the member is raising?