Mr. Speaker, it has been a long time coming to get to this point. I am absolutely thrilled and moved by a lot of the speeches we heard, not just today but over the course of the last 15 months when this bill first began in this place.
There are so many thanks to go around. I can only thank them so many times, but I want to thank our stakeholder community, which has from the beginning helped to explain this bill not only to other members of Parliament, but to the general public at large: the Canadian Grief Alliance for making public statements on the bill; the Canadian Cancer Society for lobbying members of Parliament; the Alberta Hospice Palliative Care Association; the Canadian Hospice Palliative Care Association; the Heart and Stroke Foundation; the MS society as well as the many individuals who have shared their stories with our office, who reached out and told us about the death of a loved one. They told us this bill would have meant to them if it had passed prior to the death of their loved one.
It is rather fitting that this is National Hospice Palliative Care Week and we are having this conversation about supports for palliative care and where we can take those supports into the future. I know we have spoken at length with many stakeholders about laws that have been passed in New Zealand when it comes to supporting more palliative care measures that would allow Canada to essentially catch up in being a compassionate country, but we can do more.
I also want Douglas Wolfe and Sébastien St-Arnaud. Both of them have been incredibly helpful to work with in the public service. They reached out to me, when we had initial conversations, about how to make the bill better. This is a reflection of a lot of work they have put in.
I want to end where I began on this bill. I spoke in my very first speech about the inspiration for this. It was about the death of my grandma. My grandma passed away when I was brand new to the work force. I had to make a decision whether to spend those final moments with her or to continue on in my job. I know have shared that story in this chamber before, but it is something that moved and inspired me to get into politics. It has moved and inspired many in the stakeholder community to get better supports for palliative individuals.
I have wondered many times in the last 15 months what grandma would be thinking at this moment, knowing we are on the cusp of a law being made in the country because of the influence she had over me when I was a small little guy growing up in Edmonton.
I also lost my grandpa two months ago. I know he as well will be looking down upon moments like this and be proud. As a former veteran who fought for our country, he would be proud that his grandson brought this bill, a law, forward to this place.
This is an opportunity for all of us to come together. This has been non-partisan from the start. The Minister of Labour has been incredibly available to me whenever I needed to spitball some ideas with her. It has been helpful.
What I do hope we get from this bill and the ultimate vote on it is the opportunity to show future generations that politics does not always have to be partisan, that we do not have to shout across the aisle at one another. We do not have to argue on every issue. I hope we inspire that future generation to come together, to see that we as Canadians can make better legislation if we put down our collective arms sometimes to come up with better laws in the country.
I appreciate the time that everybody has spent on this, leading up to this bill. I certainly hope we are able to see it move to the other place, and sometime soon.