Discussion · Government Orders
Andrew Lawton Conservative
“I oppose this bill because it leaves out important details about how safety rules will work. Advance requests for assisted dying will not expire. A person could make a request and live for 10 or 15 years, even though people often change their minds over time. These problems must be fixed.”
“Mr. Speaker, that is exactly the problem here. Because so much is being left to how this system would be implemented, we do not actually know what safeguards in practice, if any, would exist. I will note as well that the lack of an expiration for advance requests is a key problem. Conceivably, someone could live with a diagnosis for 10 to 15 years, which means an advance request could collect dust on a shelf for that long as well. I know there have been cases where people had signed up at one point to be organ donors and later regretted it. There is a litany of problems with this that need to be dealt with.”
Official Hansard
Mr. Speaker, that is exactly the problem here. Because so much is being left to how this system would be implemented, we do not actually know what safeguards in practice, if any, would exist. I will note as well that the lack of an expiration for advance requests is a key problem. Conceivably, someone could live with a diagnosis for 10 to 15 years, which means an advance request could collect dust on a shelf for that long as well. I know there have been cases where people had signed up at one point to be organ donors and later regretted it. There is a litany of problems with this that need to be dealt with.