Mr. Speaker, I will begin by presenting a number of petitions on the real horror that the so-called medical assistance in dying regime in this country has become. We have seen how this is really a matter of national shame. In debates in parliaments around the world, Canada has been identified as a cautionary tale of what can happen when things go wrong in the health care system as a result of an out-of-control, poorly managed and poorly regulated system of so-called medically facilitated death.
I am thinking in the context of this petition on MAID coercion, particularly the story of Brigitte Stegemann, an 83-year-old woman who was killed under very suspicious circumstances. The Belleville police are investigating. This story has not been covered in any mainstream media in Canada. People have to go to British newspapers to read about it. This is the horror that the system has become, and it is not being discussed nearly enough in this country, but I am pleased to be able to bring the voice of petitioners to the House on this issue through a number of petitions that draw attention to this problem.
The first petition highlights, in particular, the situation of the disability community in this country and how choosing so-called MAID due to a lack of available services or treatments is not a real choice, that allowing facilitated death for those with disabilities or chronic illnesses who are not dying devalues their lives and tacitly endorses the notion that life with disability is optional. Petitioners call on the government to make incremental reforms to this regime to protect all Canadians whose natural death is not reasonably foreseeable by prohibiting medical assistance in dying for those whose prognosis for a natural death is more than six months.
We have also, incredibly, heard proposals even in the House to extend facilitated death to children. I have a second petition that calls on the government to not ever legalize the killing of children within our medical system.
There was a proposal made by Louis Roy of the Quebec College of Physicians, incredibly, to legalize the killing of infants with so-called severe deformities and very serious syndromes. With these kinds of proposals, it is no wonder that the British Parliament, on all sides, has called Canada a cautionary tale—