Mr. Speaker, because of the procedural direction now being taken by the government, I think this will probably be one of the last speeches in this debate.
I want to recognize the tone of the debate that has taken place. I know members have spoken politely, softly, and respectfully. This has been the tone on all sides. However, I wonder if I may stretch that tone a little bit.
This is the most important issue that Parliament will deal with, I suspect, in a very long time. Without resorting to personal attacks, this is an issue to get angry about, if there ever was one.
The mistakes that we stand to make in this legislation mean that men and women may die who would not have otherwise, who will be missed because of the absence of advance review, who will be pressured forward because of the lack of palliative care, and who will be matched with willing physicians because of allowances for doctor shopping, even if they have been identified as not meeting the criteria by their own and other physicians.
Tonight, we should be angry. Canadians should be angry. While speaking softly and politely about the need to talk about death and the need to listen, the government is proceeding to shut down debate after only two days. The invocation of closure in this case will not in any way affect the timeline of this bill. We know that.
It is already being studied at the justice committee, and even days of additional debate would not prevent the justice committee from proceeding on the timeline it has already set. A vote would not change that. It would not affect the timeline at all, and yet the government is proceeding to shut down debate with its notice of closure motion coming forward tomorrow.
Canadians who care about this issue from all sides, Canadians who care about the important role we have as legislators to examine and debate legislation in this House, these Canadians should be angry about what is happening on this legislation.
The absence of meaningful debate increases the significant chances of error when it comes to shaping legislation that is, in my view, already riddled with problems. An error on an issue this important will mean unnecessary loss of life.
I have already spoken about my substantive concerns on this bill, but by way of quick review, this legislation contains no meaningful safeguards because even the exceptions in it are riddled with holes. The written consent provision excludes those who cannot sign. The waiting period can be routinely waived. Mental illness is not at all clearly excluded.
The requirement that death be reasonably foreseeable is too ambiguous to effectively exclude anyone. The requirement that two doctors sign off merely encourages doctor shopping. Even if the already-ambiguous criteria are not followed, people who kill an unwilling patient can be let off the hook if they claim a reasonable but mistaken belief that the criteria applied.
I have said that we have here a perfect storm: ambiguous criteria and a reasonable but mistaken belief clause, which means that it would be nearly impossible to prosecute anyone who kills a patient, even without consent. We have heard the data from countries with similar systems and the impact they have on patients who do not consent.
All of these problems could be fixed through amendments. A requirement for advance review by competent legal authority would ensure that those who do not consent are not pushed forward against their will. Provisions on palliative care and conscience protection would better protect the autonomy of patients and would also protect the autonomy of physicians.
We could discuss these changes. We could make these changes. We ought to.
Tonight, I want to also do what other members in this House have done, and that is to share stories about life and stories about death.
My story starts around the turn of the last century in Germany, with a Jewish doctor named Rudolf Kuppenheim, the first person in his family who was able to get a university education. One day in the course of his practice, a young child named Gertrud was brought to him for treatment for diphtheria. At the time, the usual treatment was to make a small slit in the throat that would allow the afflicted child to breathe. The child's mother, however, resisted this treatment. Her mother refused to allow Dr. Rudolf Kuppenheim to make the necessary incision, because it would leave a scar. The mother believed that the scar would prevent her daughter from getting married.
Rudolf became angry, very angry, and justly so. He berated the woman for putting her daughter's life at risk. Notwithstanding the social pressures and the challenges that a young woman might face in that culture and time, this girl's life, her value, her dignity, were not dependent on whether or not she could find a husband.
As it happened, that girl not only got married, but she later married that doctor's son. That couple had a daughter who was born Ursula Lilly Kuppenheim, and Ursula Lilly Kuppenheim was my grandmother.
She grew up in a society that denied her dignity as well. As a half-Jewish child, she lived through the horrors of the Holocaust, only able to leave Germany after the war. Her mother had her dignity denied because she might have been hard to marry off. She had her dignity denied because of her Jewish heritage, but the shifting vagaries of social attitudes never changed who these women were: human beings.
Rudolf Kuppenheim and his wife tragically took their own lives when the Gestapo came to their home. Suicide is always a tragedy, but I understand that they were in a position where they felt that they had no other choice: suicide or tortured death in a concentration camp. No just society forces people to make that choice, but at the time my grandmother lived.
In 2006, my grandmother, or Oma as we called her, died of cancer. Everyone dies, but not everyone truly lives. Across continents, from persecution to extensive contribution, my grandmother truly lived.
She always told us that she wanted to die like Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob did. They did not suffer or get sick, at least at the time of their death. They just realized that they were about to die, called their families together, and said goodbye. That is what she wanted, but it did not happen that way. She did suffer very much.
Suffering is a part of the human condition. It is just and right that we seek to minimize it. It is also just and right that we understand that a human who suffers does not cease to be human, to have value, to have dignity. She had dignity from the moment she was born to the moment she died, whether her dignity was denied because of her Jewishness or because of her illness.
Members here have to understand that the so-called dying with dignity movement is shaped by a very dangerous view of humanity. It views human beings as instrumental or experiential creatures, valued for what they do or for the quality of their experiences, but that is not what we are. We are in fact creatures with intrinsic value.
We value the dignity of human beings, not principally because they are useful, because they are having a good time, or because they want to be valued. We value human beings because of what they are. We understand intrinsically the difference between human rights and animal rights, rights for creatures which have feelings and experiences only, and rights for creatures that have value intrinsically. This movement, this presumption that the ill or disabled lack dignity could not be more wrong.
I want to conclude with a final appeal to all members. If they have grave concerns about this legislation, stand up and vote against it at second reading. I know some members are worried about the possibility of a legal vacuum, but this legislation replaces ambiguous criteria with other ambiguous criteria. It does not create any kind of review mechanism. Fundamentally, it replaces one vacuum with another.
There is a better way. If members vote down this legislation or even ensure that the vote is closer, the government can, will, and indeed must come back with a more serious bill, and if it does a better job of incorporating certain specific proposals we have made, then we can all work together to ensure a quick passage of a better bill.
Alternatively, if we go along just because we want to proceed, we will have entrenched a piece of legislation that will cause real problems, life and death problems, problems that will be very hard to fix.
It is disgusting, but we have a proposal to invoke closure on an issue so vital, on an issue of life and death, after only two days of debate. We must stand up to this. We must make our stand. I have made mine and I ask members in the House to make theirs.
