Discussion · Government Orders
Pierre Poilievre Conservative
“I do not support letting people ask in advance to be helped to die later. People cannot agree ahead of time to their own future death. Setting up rules for that is dangerous and needs much more study than we can do before Christmas. We should split this bill so we can ban assisted dying for mental illness now without rushing into these risky new rules.”
“Madam Speaker, no I do not, because I do not believe that someone can grant pre-emptive consent for a subsequent death. There is a very serious risk no matter what we do. Let us assume that I had answered the question with “yes”. That framework would take time. Serious and deadly risks would come with creating a system of rules for people to grant permission to die much later on once their ability to consent is gone, and that would require immense study and surgical precision, which cannot be done with a bill that would be rammed through before Christmas. This bill needs to be split so that we can ban MAID for mental illness and give hope to these people, but at the same time not make the deadly mistake of expanding into the unknown without doing our research.”
Madam Speaker, no I do not, because I do not believe that someone can grant pre-emptive consent for a subsequent death. There is a very serious risk no matter what we do. Let us assume that I had answered the question with “yes”. That framework would take time. Serious and deadly risks would come with creating a system of rules for people to grant permission to die much later on once their ability to consent is gone, and that would require immense study and surgical precision, which cannot be done with a bill that would be rammed through before Christmas. This bill needs to be split so that we can ban MAID for mental illness and give hope to these people, but at the same time not make the deadly mistake of expanding into the unknown without doing our research.