Mr. Speaker, it is late, but it is never too late to talk about what life is all about.
In fact, death is a fact of life. That is what we are discussing tonight. Let me begin with my conclusion. We have heard our colleagues repeatedly point out that Quebec was ahead of the curve, that it conducted multiparty consultations and that it even took the time to examine each step of the process. Today, we are saying that Quebec is not only ready, but that it also needs the latitude, insofar as the Criminal Code is concerned, to fully implement its legislation.
Here, we began studying medical assistance in dying five years ago, looking in particular at what took place in Quebec. That work yielded a wealth of findings that now allow us to clearly distinguish between two situations: advance requests and individuals who have been suffering from unbearable mental illnesses for decades.
What I am beginning to realize is that we are not going to make it happen. Some people want to divide the bill, others want to have two votes. Basically, I cannot even keep up. There is one thing I do understand, though. Can we take action together and agree that if certain provinces and territories are not ready, that is their business? If we in Quebec are ready, because we have been talking about it for years, then please let us implement what we believe is right for us. This would illustrate that such a sensitive bill was drafted through a collaborative process. I do not think we will achieve that here in the House. We have perfectly legitimate differences of opinion, but when it comes to end-of-life care, human dignity is being set aside when the individual should come first regarding decisions about their own life.
When someone is making a decision for themselves, I would feel very uncomfortable doing or saying anything that might influence that person. It is not up to me to tell them, no, they cannot die, or yes, they can die. It is up to the individual.
I am saying this because I have been through it myself. I am talking about it, but I am certainly not trying to oversimplify things and suggest that the law should be based on my experience. I want that to be clear. I have lived experience. In 2017, my father was diagnosed with ALS. People who were here more than a decade ago knew the MP Mauril Bélanger. ALS is a devastating disease. It causes tremendous suffering. It can reach a point where a person is no longer able to endure that suffering, which in this case is both physical and psychological because the person is trapped in their own body.
In 2017, my father participated in several research studies. At the time, even I, as his young daughter, would tell him that he could not possibly be thinking about death. He told me that death is just part of life. However, after discussing his case with researchers and scientists, he chose to die with his illness rather than from it. In the final stages of ALS, swallowing and breathing become increasingly difficult. The heart does not stop, but people generally end up suffocating. Because my father was eligible for MAID, he chose to die without having to endure that suffering. No one wants their parents to leave them, but he made me understand something.
It was only afterwards that I realized how understandable it is not to want to lose a loved one. It is out of love. What I am hearing in these discussions is, above all, a fear that the person might miss out on something, that there could still be moments of happiness. I could have a colleague tell me that a person with dementia has experienced 24 hours of complete lucidity over the course of three months. Ultimately, it is up to the person who is caring for their loved one. We are unable to come to an agreement about the role of loved ones this evening.
I am thinking back to when my father told me he was going to die from his illness. Of course, there was the possibility of intervention, but no one was ever able to intervene. I experienced it myself. How many times did we have to reaffirm the legitimacy of my father's right to refuse treatment, to ask that he not be allowed to suffer, and to have his end-of-life wishes respected?
He had been trapped in his body for 20 years. He told me one day that he had been using a ventilator, a BiPAP, for eight years, that he never took it off and wore it 24 hours a day, seven days a week. He could not take it anymore. The ventilator had replaced his lungs. I told him it was a natural reaction.
That is what this is all about. Let nature take its course and let us not try to save lives. If we are sick, let us die. That is what I hear, and it troubles me. In my father's case, he lived for eight years with a device that prolonged his life, but on the day he could no longer bear having that machine on his face all the time, we respected his wishes. It may have been that way from the start, eight years earlier, but he would have missed my wedding, he would not have seen my children grow up. Is it not selfish to want more time with our loved one?
Essentially, today we are debating and talking about other people. When we are talking about others, perhaps we should ask the person who is making the choice what they want, particularly in the case of advance requests. That is also what worries me. Some say that people can live a whole other life.
Earlier, I shared an analogy, or rather a story, about a colleague. I asked him what an advance request was. Simply put, sometimes we know somebody for 50, 60 or 90 years, and then they are diagnosed with Alzheimer's. This person gets to say what they will and will not endure. They may not want their personality to change completely. They may not want to have to be fed. They may not want to be confined to a chair because they tend to wander around the building. I suggested a scenario where a person who has been in politics his entire life undergoes a 180-degree personality change, causing him to strip off his clothes and flirt with everyone he encounters. If this person acted happy, people would see it in a positive light. They would think he had certain wishes that he expressed when he still had the capacity to choose. Now that he no longer has the capacity to say that this is not the end of life he wanted, however, his wishes are no longer valid. That is what I am having a hard time understanding.
As long as our discussions do not focus strictly on ethics and the protection of each individual's right to choose, simply saying that we are going to hold more meetings and conduct more analyses will only prolong the debate.
We will never see the end of it in the House.
What I want is for every individual to be able to make their own decisions about how their life ends.
