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Michael Cooper

Conservative on Medical Assistance in Dying Safeguards Act

Replying to Andrew Lawton (Conservative)
“Madam Speaker, I thank my colleague for his work on the Special Joint Committee on Medical Assistance in Dying. I note that several of the members of the Liberal government who have spoken in favour of stopping the expansion of MAID to people with mental illness were, a few years ago, speaking in favour of expanding MAID to mental illness. The difference of a couple of years was enough for people to realize that this expansion should not be allowed to proceed. In that context, I wonder if my colleague could offer his thoughts on why we should accept the government’s artificial timeline to ram through advance requests when it is more than likely that in a few years, we will reach the same conclusion that we are reaching now on mental health, which is that the safeguards are failing and that can never be adequately woven into our MAID system.”

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Madam Speaker, I completely concur with the member for Elgin—St. Thomas—London South. There is absolutely no reason the provision for an advance request regime needs to be shoehorned into this bill. For years, the Liberals did nothing around advance directives. They did no studies, they had no consultation, and now, all of a sudden, they drop it into a bill in the face of a deadline to pass a bill by March. It is completely unacceptable, it is cynical, and it is really just an attempt to ram this through, just as they did with mental illness, without any of the scrutiny that comes with careful study and review.