Madam Speaker, I want to note that I will be splitting my time this evening with the member for Oshawa.
It is interesting that we are speaking to Bill C-7 today under these circumstances. As legislators, we have a very weighty responsibility to do our due diligence in considering legislation. We have a duty to Canadians and the constituents who elected us to thoroughly analyze and review the legislation that is passed in the House. When we are considering issues of life and death, that responsibility is only heightened, and it is absolutely reprehensible that the Liberal government is limiting debate on this legislation and hastily accepting amendments from the other chamber without due diligence.
When the House last debated Bill C-7, mental illness as the sole underlying condition was explicitly excluded from the eligibility criteria for accessing medically assisted death. The explanation to allow for it is therefore obviously significant. It requires additional scrutiny. It was not part of the justice committee's study of the legislation, and members of the committee did not have the opportunity to hear from mental health advocates on this expansion. There has not been an adequate parliamentary review of this change.
In addition to that, and of greater concern, there is no consensus in the medical community that mental illness should be considered irremediable. There is no consensus that MAID should be expanded to include persons with mental illness.
The Liberal government is amending this legislation at the end of the parliamentary process to, as I can imagine, avoid scrutiny by ramming it through the House. To proceed with this significant expansion of MAID would be absolutely reckless. This legislation endangers vulnerable Canadians and, frankly, we owe them better. We owe the one in five Canadians who struggle with mental health and mental illness better.
There are a range of effective treatments available for mental illness. However, we know that access to these treatments is limited. That is where the focus of the government should be. It should be focused on providing additional mental health supports, not recklessly expanding MAID.
The need to improve access to mental health supports has been even more pressing during the pandemic. We know that the pandemic is negatively impacting the mental health of many Canadians. We have heard about the impact that pandemic restrictions have had on the well-being of seniors in particular. Depression and loneliness are spiking, and I am reminded of the heartbreaking stories of seniors who chose MAID. They did this to avoid continued isolation during the pandemic.
To only offer a person MAID when they are at their most vulnerable point is indefensible. For those who have a mental illness, the only attainable tool in their tool box cannot be medically assisted death.
There is a serious and reasonable concern that expanding MAID to include persons with mental illness will undermine suicide prevention initiatives and recovery-based care efforts. In fact, the justice minister's own department has expressed that concern. This reckless amendment paves the way for Canadians suffering from mental illness to prematurely end their life.
We also cannot ignore the fact that this legislation continues to pre-empt the required parliamentary review of the existing MAID framework. The Liberal government's entire agenda of broadening access to medical assistance in dying in advance of that review is, on its own, deeply concerning. We have heard from persons with disabilities and medical professionals who have clearly stated that the expansion of MAID in Bill C-7 is dangerous and requires greater scrutiny.
As the Liberal government continues down this path of broadening access to MAID without ensuring proper access to appropriate care, it is actually eroding the value we place on human life. It is robbing a person of the opportunity to live with dignity.
Medical assistance in dying should not be a solution to all forms of suffering, but as the government broadens access to MAID to persons whose natural death is not reasonably foreseeable, we as a society are moving away from medical assistance in dying and ultimately toward medical-assisted suicide. The underlying message of moving in that direction is that death is a treatment for suffering.
It is my core belief that as a country, government, society and community, we have a responsibility and moral obligation to care for one another: to care for the elderly, the poor, the sick, those with disabilities and the vulnerable. We cannot sidestep our duty to care by offering death as a treatment for suffering. If the desired goal is to increase personal autonomy, we cannot accomplish that without meaningful choice. We certainly cannot do that at the expense of ensuring appropriate safeguards to protect vulnerable persons.
The united voice of disability advocates across the country who have come out in strong opposition to the bill should give all of us great pause. Shamefully, the Liberal government is not putting on the breaks. Rather, it is moving forward, full steam ahead, ignoring the serious concerns that this legislation is fast-tracking the deaths of persons with disabilities.
By removing the reasonably foreseeable death clause in the current MAID framework, this legislation opens MAID up to persons with disabilities who are not themselves when close to death. Simply put, this legislation is discriminatory and promotes ableist assumptions. Intended or not, it suggests that the lives of people with disabilities are not worth living. Instead of ensuring that a person with a disability has the accommodations and supports they need to thrive, it offers them medically assisted death as a solution.
This is particularly salient when we consider that concerns regarding a lack of appropriate safeguards for persons with disabilities in the existing MAID framework pre-existed this legislation. The former UN special rapporteur on the rights of persons with disabilities expressed concerns to the Liberal government on this very issue. She raised the issue that there were no protocols in place to ensure that a person with disabilities was offered viable alternatives to assisted death.
She recommended to the Liberal government that it investigate allegations that persons with disabilities were being pressured into seeking medical assistance in dying. She also recommended that safeguards be in place to ensure that persons with disabilities are not requesting MAID simply because there are no other appropriate alternatives available to them. These same concerns have been raised by disability advocates across the country. However, the justice minister and the Liberal government have not addressed them. Instead, they are removing and weakening the safeguards that were in place.
If we as a country offer MAID to the vulnerable while depriving them of adequate care and the resources to have a dignified, secure and healthy life, then we have failed them. We cannot pursue increasing personal autonomy at all costs. We cannot, in the name of autonomy, sacrifice safeguards for the vulnerable, undermine suicide prevention efforts, erode respect for human life and perpetuate negative stereotypes about age, abilities or illness. There has to be a balance.
Certainly, we cannot make decisions lightly without proper scrutiny and review, and that has not happened. The Liberal government has not allowed a parliamentary committee to hear from a single witness about expanding MAID to include those with mental illness. It is ignoring the pleas and serious concerns raised about this legislation. It has limited debate on it and continues to delay a mandated parliamentary review of the existing MAID framework.
I urge all members of the House to oppose the Liberal government's attempt to recklessly adopt significant amendments to this legislation in the final hours, and to oppose its efforts to steamroll these legislative changes through this place without proper scrutiny and care. Let us do our proper due diligence on this legislation. We owe that to all Canadians and the lives that hang in the balance.