44th Parl. 1st Sess.
May 17, 2023 02:00PM
- May/17/23 5:07:14 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I thank the hon. parliamentary secretary for all of her work on this.
The member mentioned how difficult these discussions have been to get to the real crux of the matter. I am looking at a discussion I had with one of my constituents on December 2 of last year. He was talking about paintball cases, that 2,000 paintballs were $150 versus magfed at $30, and that the airsoft community had not been consulted at that time. He had served in the military. He knows that AR-15s should not be available anywhere in Canada, so he was approaching it from the recreational community saying that, at the time, we had not consulted them.
Could the hon. member comment on how much work there has been to get to the right level of consultation with the right people?
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Madam Speaker, as always, it is an honour and a great privilege to speak on behalf of my community of Peterborough—Kawartha.
Tonight, I am speaking on my colleague from Abbotsford's private member's bill, Bill C-314. I have explained this before, but I will do so again. A private member's bill is something a member puts forward for the House to decide on. This is an important private member's bill, as they all are, really, because they come from a place of passion, but this is Bill C-314, an act to amend the Criminal Code, medical assistance in dying, which many of us know as MAID.
The summary states, “This enactment amends the Criminal Code to provide that a mental disorder is not a grievous and irremediable medical condition for which a person could receive medical assistance in dying.”
The preamble states:
Whereas Parliament considers it a priority to ensure that adequate supports are in place for the mental health of Canadians;
Whereas Parliament considers that vulnerable Canadians should receive suicide prevention counselling rather than access medical assistance in dying;
Whereas Parliament considers that Canada’s medical assistance in dying regime risks normalizing assisted dying as a solution
The fact that we need a private member's bill to say this feels outrageous. I have listened to other members in the House tonight, and I want to be very mindful of my tone. This is an interesting and emotional debate, but I really urge the members opposite who have said they are not going to support the bill to consider getting it to committee. There is so much more we need to study.
My question is how this is not already in legislation. I will tell members why. In December of 2021, the Senate added an amendment to Bill C-7, without any consultation, study or discussion, to add people with mental illness as eligible for MAID. This private member's bill is currently the only way we can protect those suffering from mental illness. It is the only way for us as parliamentarians to say to those watching that we believe their lives matter and that it is our job to ensure we fight for them. Today might be awful, but none of us know what tomorrow will bring, as no one knows what is out there for them.
The MAID committee was created after the amendment was added. How backward is that? It heard testimony from many experts, and I want everyone to listen to the following quote because it is the essence of this discussion.
Dr. John Maher, clinical psychiatrist and medical ethicist, stated, “Psychiatrists don't know and can't know who will get better and live decades of good life. Brain diseases are not liver diseases.” Anyone who has dealt with somebody who has a mental illness or disorder knows that we have not even scratched the surface of what we know. We do not know.
I want to read this letter from a constituent who has been following the slippery slope of the Liberal government's extension of MAID into the record. I have her permission.
She writes:
“Dear Michelle...,
My name is Kayla...I am going to be sending this letter to several MPs, but as you are [my] MP...I thought I should send this to you first. I am very troubled by something that is going to be happening very soon in this country, and I hope you will listen to what I have to say.
“Overall, I am a very healthy individual. I have a mental health condition, but it is my sole medical condition. However, I was mortified to discover last month, that Medical Assistance in Dying (MAiD...) will be available to people whose sole health condition is a mental health condition as of March 17, 2023.”
We have since voted in the House and that date has been extended one year to March 17, 2024. However, this is still in place, and this letter is very pertinent. She goes on to say:
“Persons who suffer from mental health conditions suffer horribly. I know that. I have suffered with mine for nearly 12 years. Perhaps the most appalling things of all are that 'The law no longer requires a person's natural death to be reasonably foreseeable as an eligibility criterion for MAID,' (Government of Canada, 2021) and 'There is no obligation for a person or their healthcare practitioners to inform family members if that person has requested or received MAiD.' (CAMH, 2022)...
“I think you see this for what it is...I will be eligible to end my own life on the basis that I have an incurable mental illness.”
“Let me give you a bit more background: I have 2 university degrees in Biology and Environmental Science. I have a job that I love and have held since a little while after I graduated. I have NEVER failed to pay taxes, nor have I ever taken extended leave or gone on El due to my mental illness, no matter how hard it gets. I have a family and friends that I love dearly, and they love me too. And yet now my own government has deemed my life not worth living. This isn't just unfair. This is monstrous.
“But it gets worse. What about those people who are in the same boat that I am medically, but are much, much worse off. They cannot pay their taxes because they cannot work. They have a substance addiction. They are veterans with PTSD. They are homeless because they cannot seem to fight off their demons. These are some of the most vulnerable people in our society. To say nothing of the 'mature minors' (whatever on Earth that means) that will be able to access MAiD in the future if this doesn't stop. Make no mistake. This thing, that we dress up with the nice name MAiD, is euthanasia of our most vulnerable people because they cannot 'contribute to society' like others can. The fact that the government would offer to 'get them out of the way'...in this way, just because the systems that the government put in place are failing them is an unspeakable evil.”
She put in brackets, “convince them that they should die”. These are her words.
She continues, “I hope, Michelle, that you will do everything in your power as an MP as I will do everything in my power as a citizen, to abolish this law. I understand the federal government is seeking to push back the timing”, which it did, as I said. She says this is “likely because it has received so much criticism. I understand that it likely wasn't you that made any of the decisions for this law to go ahead. But I also understand that you are in more of a position to do something about it than many people are. I hope you will respond after reading this letter.
“Sincerely,
“Kayla.”
I did respond to Kayla and we had a very powerful conversation. She gave me permission to share this letter.
I think one letter like this is enough reasonable doubt that we need to take this private member's bill very seriously. It is everything we need to know to consider and urge everyone in the House. I have heard people say, on the Bloc side, that people should have the right to choose. The reality is that people who are in such a state of mental disorder do not have that capacity. We have to help them.
I want to leave us with this. This woman's name is Elyse. She is a young university student. She said that she is so worried about this legislation to extend MAID to those with mental illness. She has struggled with mental illness, and she knows with certainty that, if someone had offered that to her during her times of illness, she would not be here today. She would not be getting her university degree. She would not be in a happy, healthy relationship, and she would not know that her life was worth living.
If one is watching at home, if one has a loved one suffering, if one is suffering, one's life matters and it is worth living. It is our job to study this to the depths to determine whether we can do this. This private member's bill is the only thing that would protect those with mental illness and mental disorder from accessing MAID. I urge every member in the House to at least pass it to committee.
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- May/17/23 7:37:48 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, this allows me to give a shout-out to our dear colleague, the member for Nunavut, because she also helped educate me on the way of life in the north.
It became very clear, after these amendments were dropped. We had indigenous witnesses come before our committee, and it was clear that consultation had not happened. Given that the government has attached so much importance to that relationship and the fact that it has passed legislation saying federal laws had to be in harmony with the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, it was quite obvious that those amendments were dropped with no consultation, and through indigenous efforts and the pressure indigenous people put on government, they can take a bow, because they are the ones who forced the government to backtrack and respect their way of life.
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- May/17/23 8:04:57 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, it is great to be working with the member on the committee, and I would like to assure her that clause-by-clause is not always this bad and does not always take six months.
On the amendments we brought forward in the fall, it became clear, after much debate and much consultation on an ongoing basis, that they needed work, so they needed to be withdrawn and another approach taken. That is what we did. We responded to what people were saying. We listened and we took action so we could move this forward in a positive way.
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Mr. Speaker, I know that, in the 42nd Parliament, I believe, the then-minister of public safety and emergency preparedness conducted quite extensive consultations right across the country. He spoke with gun clubs and many people involved in the gun community. I set up a meeting between him and members of my local gun club. In my riding, there is one of the largest outdoor ranges in the Lower Mainland, and I have actually been invited there to shoot on a couple of occasions and quite enjoyed it. I do not know how anybody can afford to do that, because it is pretty expensive. Regardless, I arranged a meeting between them and the former minister. This consultation resulted in the first iteration of Bill C-21, which did not survive that particular Parliament; it was a starting point, however, for this new version of Bill C-21.
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- May/17/23 9:59:07 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, if we look at how the bill came to be, a great deal of consultation was done. As the Prime Minister has said in the past, at the end of the day, when the bill goes through the process in the chamber and goes to the standing committee, there is a reason why we have that process. It is so that if there are ways in which we can enhance and strengthen the bill, make it a more sound and better legislation, we should be doing that.
We can look at the number of opposition amendments that Liberals have supported over the years, even when we were in a majority government. That was often done. It was not done when Stephen Harper was prime minister. Could there have been more consultations? Whether in a provincial legislature or in the national legislature here in Ottawa, one can always do more consulting. There is no doubt about that. However, the homework was done on this particular bill. It is a great bill today and, as such, I expect that it will pass, despite the Conservatives' desire to filibuster and never see it pass.
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