Mr. Speaker, it is a pleasure to take part in this debate. I listened carefully to the speeches and I am very thankful for my colleagues who have had a lot to say on the necessary protections for people with disabilities. I will follow suit.
Before I do that, I want to take the opportunity to wish my mother a happy 74th birthday. I can think of no person more worthy of recognition for her love and concern for the most vulnerable in our country. She has dedicated her life to making people's lives better at times when they need it. Therefore, I wish my mom a happy birthday, and I love her.
I will start with a quote from the executive vice-president of Inclusion Canada, Krista Carr. It captures the conversation around disabilities perfectly. At committee, she said:
The lives of people with disabilities are as necessary to the integrity of the human family as any other dimension of humanity, and this threat to the lives of people with disabilities is a threat to us all.
I am very concerned. When I think back to times I have heard Liberal ministers speak, particularly the Minister of Employment, Workforce Development and Disability Inclusion, who I have a lot of time for, we have heard a lot of talk about a disability lens. In fact, during the election campaign back in October of 2019, an article ran on CTV under the headline, “Liberals vow to implement disability lens for all government policies if re-elected.” The minister was quoted as saying that this was the next step to systemically entrench disability inclusion into the way the government did business and into the way the government made decisions.
It is intensely surprising and frustrating in the face of virtual unanimity from the disability community that the legislation gets it wrong, with 72 disability organizations, including every one of the national disability organizations, writing a letter to the government and saying as much, that the legislation needed to be rethought. It is particularly troubling because there was no need to get here. This was a driven by decision by the court of one province. It could have been appealed to the Supreme Court to get further guidance and clarity. Of course, there was a five-year review plan in the previous MAID legislation that would have been a practical and thoughtful way to move forward.
We have had the opportunity over the last several months to strike that committee. It could have been doing its work over time. Unfortunately, Parliament was shuttered for the better part of six months, with the odd sitting to pass extensions and other things that needed to keep going. For the most part, we were not sitting as a Parliament. For six weeks everything was shut down because the government wanted to avoid scrutiny on the WE scandal. We did not have to be here. That time would have been valuable to call experts in a meaningful way and have them weigh on this.
I had the opportunity to fill in at one of the committee meetings. It was, quite frankly, a complete gong show as we raced to hear hurried testimony from people who were experts in the field, weighing in on both sides of the equation. In the end, what was supposed to be a five-minute spot to ask meaningful questions to witnesses was shrunk down to two minutes. Then debate happened to try to get some of that time back. Quite honestly, it was hurried and rushed.
I think back in history to a quote by someone who I have a lot of time for, someone who has a lot of wise quotes, John Wooden, one of the most successful coaches in sports history. He once said, “If you don’t have time to do it right, when will you have time to do it over?”
We find ourselves in this situation right now. We certainly have not taken the time to do this right and we will have to do some of this over at some point in time. In the meantime, there are likely to be very troubling ramifications for those Canadians living with disabilities.
I talked about the community and all the different things the communities had to say.
I looked at recent headlines: iPolitics, “Equating assisted suicide with an equality right is a moral affront”, by Krista Carr; Michael Bach, Neil Belanger and Catherine Frazee, on November 23, in a Hill Times article titled, “Canada doesn’t need a shortcut to medically assisted dying for people with disabling conditions”; Gabrielle Peters wrote in Macleans, “Dying for the right to live”; and Trudo Lemmens and Leah Krakowitz-Broker, wrote in CBC under the headline, “Why the federal government should rethink its new medical assistance in dying law”.
I will focus particularly on the last one because from start to end, this piece gets it right. The authors start in the first paragraph, saying:
To meet the twice-renewed deadline imposed by the Quebec Superior Court in the Truchon case, the federal government is trying to push its new medical assistance in dying...bill through Parliament before year's end. Parliament should reject the key premise of this new legislation, and ask government to go back to the drawing board and start again.
It is not too late for that. Hopefully, if members of the government do not get this right in our vote coming up, hopefully, at least the Senate gets it right in its review.
Talking about people with disabilities, the authors go on to say:
[T]he bill makes their dying easier than living. Rather than instilling hope and helping to build resilience by focusing on options for living, health care providers will now be asked to discuss an early death....
[I]t seems unconscionable for governments to prioritize state-financed MAID, rather than putting resources into ensuring access to proper care and offering people a reasonable quality of life. In fact, expanding MAID is giving our health care system an all-too-easy way out.
These are very troubling words from the disability community, from experts across the country and across the range of disabilities, yet, being completely ignored by a government whose members have previously said that they would view everything through a disability lens.
I spend good part of my life, as many people know, speaking to university classes and folks around the world, at teachers conventions or whatever it might be, telling the story of my son Jaden who is 25 years old. He has autism; he is non-verbal. One of the things that we talk about all the time is the need to unlock potential, the skills and abilities that come with autism as opposed to just the challenges.
I would note that one of the most commonly used words at committee by the ministers was the word “suffering”. They talked about suffering, ending suffering, having a mechanism and the number of people suffering. Sometimes when people are talking about people with disabilities, especially people who do not have a disability themselves and maybe do not have the life experience of living with somebody who has disability, the tendency is to think of them suffering.
In fact, when we were debating the Canadian autism partnership project or the idea of a national autism strategy, in response to a question in question period, the Prime Minister referenced new tools and treatments for those suffering from autism. This mindset is problematic. When one equates a mindset that thinks of people with disabilities automatically as suffering as opposed to people who have skills and abilities that we need to invest in, that they can contribute to making life better for all of us, we are on a dangerous path when we combine it with the legislation we are dealing with now and that thinking of people with disabilities.
