Mr. Speaker, if members want more petitions, please ask, but the final petition I will table this evening deals with the issue of euthanasia.
The petitioners are concerned in particular about the adverse effects of the current euthanasia regime on people with disabilities. They note that allowing so-called medical assistance in dying for those with disabilities or chronic illness devalues their lives, tacitly endorsing the notion that life with disability is optional and by extension dispensable.
The petitioners highlight concerns about how offering euthanasia as a “solution” for disability or chronic illness reduces incentives to improve the treatment and care of people with those conditions. The petitioners say that Canadians do not want an ableist health care system where the lives of those with disabilities are seen as not worth living.
The petitioners propose, in this case, that the government protect all Canadians whose natural death is not reasonably foreseeable by prohibiting euthanasia for those whose prognosis for natural death is more than six months.