Madam Speaker, I will be splitting my time with the member for Bellechasse—Les Etchemins—Lévis.
Under the Prime Minister's watch, Canada's MAID regime is broken, and the Prime Minister broke it. His government is the architect of a MAID regime that serves as a warning to governments around the world that are contemplating perhaps implementing a MAID regime of what not to do. The world is taking notice.
These are the headlines in the U.K. over the past two weeks about Canada's MAID regime: “Poor, depressed or lonely in Canada? Why not let us kill you”, “Assisted dying ‘abused’ in Canada, admits group that helped legalise it”, “I went for a mastectomy and they offered me assisted dying, Canadian cancer patient reveals”, “Poor at risk of being coerced into assisted dying in Canada”, “Canada's assisted death rush is a grim warning”, “Euthanasia doctors in Canada struggle with the ethics of killing vulnerable patients”, “Dark lessons from Canada” and “Once 'assisted dying' is legal, the boundaries of what is permissible expand”. These are out of the Telegraph, the Times of London, the Independent and The Critic, over just the past two weeks.
UN experts, including the UN Special Rapporteur on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, have condemned the Prime Minister's MAID regime. Here at home, virtually every disabilities rights organization has been sounding the alarm for years that the lives of persons living with disabilities are uniquely at risk after the government recklessly removed any connection between the foreseeability of death and eligibility for MAID. For years, there have been credible reports of widespread abuse, non-compliance with the law and persons who were administered MAID under highly questionable circumstances, to put it mildly.
In the face of those credible and disturbing reports, the response of the Prime Minister was to accuse those who were sounding the alarm that vulnerable persons were falling through the cracks as being blinded by ideology. How callous on the part of the Prime Minister and how ironic, because it is not those who are calling the alarm who are ideological but the Prime Minister himself.
If there was any doubt about the credibility of those reports of abuse and non-compliance, those have surely been put to rest in the face of the bombshell report of two weeks ago from the Ontario MAID Death Review Committee, out of the Ontario Coroner's Office. I emphasize that this is a committee composed of medical professionals and legal experts, as well as MAID assessors. The report found that vulnerable persons face potential coercion and undue influence to seek MAID. The report identifies a number of cases in Ontario where persons received MAID who likely did not qualify under the law and where there was evidence of elements of coercion leading to their deaths.
I will cite a few examples. One was a 40-year-old Ontario man who received MAID after his psychiatrist suggested it. The MAID practitioner who administered MAID drove him out to a location to administer MAID. The committee, in its report, said that that may have “created pressure and gave rise to a perception of hastening a person towards death.”
Another Ontario man received MAID. He had, only a year before, attempted to end his life. He suffered from ulcers, had suicidal ideation and severe personality disorder. In all likelihood, he did not qualify under the law but he received MAID. In another case, an Ontario man was convinced that he had suffered from a vaccine injury. He received MAID. A post-mortem, however, found no pathological findings in that regard. There is the disturbing case of a 50-year-old London, Ontario, woman who received MAID due to a lack of adequate housing for her to live in a home having regard for her symptoms of multiple chemical sensitivity syndrome. There are many other disturbing cases.
Alarm bells should be going off at the Department of Health and the Department of Justice but instead these shocking findings have been met with silence on the part of the Minister of Health and the Minister of Justice. It is as if they do not care.
The report found that among those who received MAID, who were not terminally ill, they disproportionately came from Ontario's most deprived communities, leading the committee in its report to suggest that “MAID could be the option of least resistance and be used to end lives when social policies have failed them.”
The report identified widespread doctor shopping, persons who were turned down and who went to another medical practitioner until they got the result that they wanted. On that point, it should not come as a surprise, given that doctor shopping has been a well-known loophole in the law. It is a loophole that the government has failed to close and it is a loophole that has become the standard to be abused, abused by none other than CAMAP, the body that is supposedly responsible for developing training for MAID assessors, a body that has been tasked by the government to develop the MAID curriculum and a body that has received millions of taxpayer dollars from the government.
At a CAMAP seminar, radical and infamous MAID activist Jocelyn Downie actually encouraged doctor shopping. She said, “You can ask as many clinicians as you want or need.” At another seminar, she said, “Disagreement doesn't mean you must stop.”
Those are chilling words and illustrate how embedded abuse is in the system after nine years of the Liberals. Over the past nine years, the Liberals have failed to establish robust safeguards to protect the vulnerable. What safeguards they have put in place, they have systematically dismantled over the past number of years, all while turning a blind eye to reports of abuse and non-compliance, rendering the government and the Prime Minister complicit in that abuse and non-compliance.
As a result of the government's recklessness and negligence, the lives of the poor, the disabled, and, if the Liberals get their way, soon the mentally ill have fallen and will continue to fall through the cracks. MAID, after nine years of the Prime Minister is the very antithesis of what is humane and compassionate.
