Mr. Speaker, respectfully, what would be set up in this legislation is ridiculous and unreal. It says, on the one hand, that we must allow a person to live as long as they want, up to the point of intolerable suffering. At the same time, it is saying that somebody else, external to them, would decide, based on an advance directive written years before the suffering has even been experienced, comparing that document to what they perceive the person's experiences are.
The idea that somebody else is going to decide what is intolerable suffering for a person who does not have capacity to consent, and is not even being asked to consent, is ludicrous. It is nonsensical. The only basis on which the framework could plausibly work is with contemporaneous consent, where the person attests to their own suffering. How can a third party attest to the level of suffering a person is experiencing? Again, it is dangerous and nonsensical to have somebody else make decisions for them.