Mr. Speaker, I am presenting a petition today highlighting the concerns of petitioners regarding euthanasia in Canada. The petitioners point out that choosing to end one's life because of a lack of available services or treatments is not a real choice. They also point out that allowing those with a disability or chronic illness who are not dying to choose to end their life devalues their life and tacitly endorses the notion that life with a disability is optional and, by extension, dispensable. Offering medical assistance in dying as a solution to a disability or chronic illness reduces incentives to improve treatment or care for people living with those conditions.
The petitioners note that Canada does not want to be an ableist society. They also point out that people with disabilities have expressed opposition to allowing MAID for people with disabilities, or track 2, as it is sometimes known. They are calling on the government to protect all Canadians whose natural death is not reasonably foreseeable by prohibiting medical assistance in dying to those whose prognosis for natural death is more than six months.