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Luc Thériault

Bloc Québécois on Medical Assistance in Dying Safeguards Act 2026-11-04

Replying to Garnett Genuis (Conservative)

“Madam Speaker, in the “Sixth Annual Report on Medical Assistance in Dying in Canada”, from Health Canada, detailed data was gathered on MAID requests and on the number of requests that were carried out. Strikingly, in one year, 692 people made and then withdrew a request for MAID. This is interesting. These are people who, because of where they were at and because of whatever aspects of their circumstances, made that request and then decided they did not want it. That is 692 people in one year. Very clearly, if we had a system of advance requests, a person could be killed later based on a document they signed before, without being asked about that contemporaneously at the time they are being killed. That is in this bill. The bill would not require that they be asked anything at the time their life is ended. Someone could carry that out based on what they said before. Where would that leave the 692 people in one year who, using their autonomy, made one decision but later, also using their autonomy, made a different decision to undo their previous decision?”

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Madam Speaker, with all due respect, I think that my colleague is comparing apples and oranges. I also think that he misunderstands the very principle of an advance request. An advance request is made while a person is still of sound mind, after being diagnosed with a degenerative illness that progresses in stages. At the formal meeting where the patient’s criteria for what is tolerable are officially determined, the patient may even receive an explanation of what their will be like and what they will experience up to the end. Out of respect for the patient’s dignity and self-determination—in health matters, the law always gives precedence to the individual’s personal integrity—a person has a right to say they want to receive MAID when they become incapacitated and their tolerance threshold is met, if this is truly what they wanted and if their decision was based on an informed choice. I fail to see any moral issue there, unless a person is religious.