Mr. Speaker, it is a great privilege to speak today in favour of this important motion brought forward by the hon. member for Timmins—James Bay to establish a very necessary pan-Canadian palliative and end-of-life care strategy.
The motion speaks to a real and growing issue that will impact more and more of us as our population ages and as we approach a period when not only are Canadians living longer lives, but as baby boomers reach retirement age, more Canadians than ever will be in that top tier of older age.
No one wants to think about end-of-life considerations. We all want long, happy, and healthy lives for ourselves and for our loved ones. However, mothers and fathers and sons and daughters fall ill, often unexpectedly. The onslaught of a debilitating or even terminal illness will turn lives around, regardless of age, and bring about incredibly tough questions. It is emotional. There is no doubt about that.
There are a great number of us who have had this experience. We all have stories to share.
Mine is my father Mico, a vital and active man, a long-distance runner in his youth, an established businessman and leader, and one of the longest-serving aldermen in Guelph. It shook the foundation of my entire family when he developed Alzheimer's disease. The disease and the toll it took on him fundamentally changed not only his quality of life but also altered how my brothers, sisters, mother, and I related to him.
It is impossible to live through an ordeal like that and not consider any number of options. However, I can say that as terrible as the disease was, the whole experience drew us that much closer to him and our family that much closer together. I learned through experiencing it so intensely that the process of dying and everything associated with it can most often be a process as much for the benefit of the living as it is suffering for those dying.
In that time of need is found a time to serve those dying and a time to possibly attend to unresolved issues. It is a time that would otherwise be lost if we do not care compassionately for our elderly and ailing loved ones.
This might not be the same experience for everyone. We are a diverse country with an incredibly diverse populace. This is why I believe that not only must we work with the provinces to create an integrated and flexible framework but that such a collaborative model is the one way we can fully account for the geographic differences between provinces, between cities, and even between urban and rural divides, as well as our many cultures and communities, from Canada's first nations, Metis, and Inuit, to those most recently arrived, so that good palliative care does not depend on one's area code.
The Canadian Medical Association defines palliative care as:
...an approach that improves the quality of life of patients and their families facing the problems associated with a life-threatening illness. It involves the prevention and relief of suffering by means of early identification, assessment and treatment of pain and other physical, psychosocial and spiritual symptoms.
I believe now, as I believed when I first began working with the member for Kitchener—Waterloo and the member for Windsor—Tecumseh as co-chairs of the Parliamentary Committee on Palliative and Compassionate Care, that if people are given a reason to live, feel their lives are relevant and significant, truly do not feel that they are a burden on society or especially on their families, and are enabled to live pain-free, they just might be less inclined to turn to more desperate measures as a relief from the emotional, mental, or physical pain from which they suffer.
I call to mind a beautiful and comprehensive quote from esteemed Canadian Jean Vanier, founder of L'Arche, which accomplishes better than I might the importance of giving people who may be suffering from a serious or terminal illness a reason to carry on. He says:
Each of us is fragile, with deep needs for both love and a sense of belonging. We begin and end our lives vulnerable and dependent, requiring others to care for us. ... In our states of dependence, our need cries out for attention and care. If this need is well received, it calls forth the powers of love in others, and creates unity around us, the gifts of the vulnerable to our world. If our cry and our need are unmet, we remain alone and in anguish. ... The danger in our culture of productivity and achievement is that we easily dismiss and ignore as unproductive the gifts and the beauty of our most vulnerable members, and we do so at our own peril, dehumanizing ourselves.
To accomplish this, to elevate those suffering from their solitude and anguish, we must create a framework whereby this can be addressed while also incorporating the possible cultural and regional differences that might be present.
Over the course of our study and in the creation of our non-partisan report, we travelled across Canada, and hundreds of informed Canadians travelled to Ottawa, where we heard from witnesses from coast to coast to coast who shared their stories and experiences with palliative care, elder abuse, and mental health to assist in drafting our report, appropriately entitled “Not to be Forgotten”.
Among our conclusions after hearing from these diverse witnesses was precisely what this motion seeks to accomplish by creating a national palliative and end-of-live care strategy. It would be flexible and integrated for maximum impact on those living through end-of-life events and on the 80% of care provided by families who take up that important yet difficult responsibility.
Through collaboration, the various levels of government and health and well-being stakeholders can develop and implement a nationally recognized framework with standards of care that would improve the quality of life for patients reaching end of life, providing the necessary tools to manage pain and providing more dignity. These tools may come in the form of meaningful tax relief or employment insurance payments for those who leave work to care for their infirm loved ones or in the form of better home care provided by personal support workers, whose jobs are quickly becoming the jobs of the future, or in the form of a national standard for hospice care uniformly applied across Canada.
As the member for Timmins—James Bay highlighted in his speech on this motion, “...what we are seeing across the country is a real patchwork of services”. This was one of many conclusions reached in our report. He went on to highlight the inconsistency of strategies or even provision of services in cities across Canada. This exemplifies why the strategy must be a national one and why we must start the ball rolling here. We can start here to coordinate with the other levels of government to facilitate collaboration in research and information and to dismantle the series of silos that normally operate in isolation across the country.
For instance, one such strategy is pain management. There has yet to be a comprehensive pain management treatment strategy upon which people can rely. It is currently a hit-or-miss experience with family doctors who are yet to be completely trained in the area of pain management.
We have a responsibility as a national leader and the chief communicator in raising awareness of the issues surrounding end-of-life and palliative care, particularly given the complexities brought forward by the mix of health, emotional, financial, and social pressures. These complexities and failing to deal with them properly, whether by offering help to caregivers or hope for the dying, lead to devastating consequences of their own, consequences I examined quite specifically throughout the committee's report. It became obvious that these pressures in today's society intersect and could lead to family breakdown and even elder abuse.
Beyond this primary leadership role, it is the federal government that sets the standards for universal high-quality care. The provinces are certainly responsible for delivery, but it is delivered best in conjunction with national benchmarks. This is an issue that does or will impact every Canadian at some point, so it is the Government of Canada that needs to step into the role.
My colleague, the hon. member for Vancouver Centre, pointed out in her remarks on this topic that tens of thousands of seniors die each year in Canada, and not all of them are able to get the kind of care they need as they approach end-of-life issues.
I applaud my colleague from Timmins—James Bay for bringing this motion to the floor of the House and for helping to continue the great work done by parliamentarians from all parties on palliative care.
This motion is not the end of the conversation. I think this is just the beginning. I hope that all of us here in the House can get behind that conversation and then bring it home to our ridings and genuinely create the framework necessary to put a national palliative care strategy together.
