Ziad Aboultaif

“Mr. Speaker, I will be sharing my time this afternoon. Bill C-41 is a profound and deeply personal issue, I think, to everyone who will consider it, and everyone who has intervened on it today approaches it from different life experiences, different backgrounds and different beliefs. Today, I am approaching this from my perspective as a Roman Catholic. I am guided by my faith and my belief in the inherent dignity and value of human life from conception to natural death. The dignity that every person has is not diminished by suffering or by illness. Their dignity is not diminished by disability or by their dependence on others. It is through that understanding of dignity that I approach this, and my concern for the compassion and care of others. I recognize that the serious suffering, which is probably unimaginable to any of us, that leads some people to consider MAID is at the heart of why this issue was ever brought to the attention of legislators. Those who support MAID may do so out of compassion and respect for the individual autonomy of those who are suffering. Certainly, suffering is not something we should seek, celebrate or ignore. I think we have a responsibility to relieve suffering where we can, but suffering, again, does not diminish the dignity of a person who is experiencing it, and it does not make their life any less valuable. In this legislation, the provision of MAID for mental illness as the sole underlying medical condition has been excluded. With the difficulty in determining the irremediability of a psychological condition, that is a positive change. I am certainly supportive of that exclusion being included in this legislation. We need to make sure that there is access to treatment for people who are suffering with mental illness. We also need to make sure they have timely access to treatment. In recent years, we have heard about veterans who have approached Veterans Affairs Canada for care in response to injuries and illnesses related to their service to Canada. It is so difficult to imagine that the testimony concerning this that Canadians heard at the Standing Committee on Veterans Affairs described things that could have happened here. Veterans, in multiple cases, who were seeking that care were offered MAID instead of receiving treatment, a benefit they are entitled to by virtue of their service to Canada, which they offered with unlimited liability. That is a specific phrase, the “unlimited liability” that our veterans serve our country with. It means they can be put in harm’s way, leading to their death, in service to Canada. When they leave the service, what is our liability to them? Certainly, we owe them the care for conditions arising from their service. Has Canada done a great job in taking care of our veterans? No, it has not. Is that problem unique to any period of time? No, it is not, but it is incumbent on us now to do better, to get it right and to take care of our veterans, who served us with unlimited liability. The testimony we heard at committee was, of course, that some of these veterans were offered MAID, not care, but death. That is hard to imagine. We will hear in some of the speeches from some of my colleagues that there are not sufficient safeguards for Canadians, for people who are suffering, for people who are considering their condition in the future and considering an advance directive. There are not sufficient safeguards. What I want to raise for the government’s and the minister’s consideration is what protections there are for veterans approaching the government for care for those service-related injuries and illnesses. They should never be encouraged to end their lives. There is, I think, a departmental directive that veterans affairs employees are supposed to no longer offer medical assistance in dying to our veterans. I think that for an issue as grave as this, the opportunity that is afforded to us in crafting the legislation, because we have to get it right, is to make sure there is independent and sufficient oversight but also legal protections, which would bring legal consequences for anyone who was to offer MAID to a veteran seeking care for an illness or injury arising from their service. That is not the role of Veterans Affairs Canada. This is not an easy conversation for any of us to have. I think we all know someone who has spent their final days, weeks, months or, in some cases, years not just in a diminished capacity but suffering. It is a hard conversation to have. It is one that we are having, and I appreciate the need to be respectful of one another in engaging in this, because we are all coming at it from different perspectives. In finding the balance, should this law come to pass, to make sure there are sufficient safeguards for everyone, I have highlighted, in particular, some of the safeguards that could be considered for veterans. I encourage the promotion of the dignity of all people. I think something we can agree on, in a conversation where there will be disagreement, is that we need to look out for each other, especially the most vulnerable among us. It is with that view that I have offered this intervention, and I will take questions on that. Hopefully, we can get this right if and when it moves to committee.”