Mr. Speaker, my second petition is from a group of individuals who say that choosing medical assistance in dying because of a lack of available services or treatments is not a real choice. Allowing medical assistance in dying for those with disabilities or chronic illnesses who are not dying devalues their lives, tacitly endorsing the notion that life with disability is optional and, by extension, dispensable. Offering medical assistance in dying as a solution for disability or chronic illnesses reduces incentives to improve treatment and care for people with those conditions.
Canadians do not want an ableist health care system in which the lives of those with disabilities are seen as not worth living. Many disability advocates in Canada have expressed opposition to allowing MAID for people with disabilities. Therefore, these citizens and residents of Canada call upon the government to protect all Canadians whose natural death is not reasonably foreseeable by prohibiting medical assistance in dying for those whose prognosis for natural death is more than six months.