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moved that Bill C-260, An Act to amend the Criminal Code (medical assistance in dying—protection against coercion), be read the second time and referred to a committee. He said: Mr. Speaker, we are familiar with the problem of people facing stereotypes based on immutable characteristics like race and gender, people being told that they are better suited to a particular kind of career path or that they are not fit to pursue certain subjects simply because of their personal characteristics. Here in Canada, governments undertake to push back against this kind of stereotyping and to give life to the reality that people should not be pushed into presupposed categories. We pursue together an ideal of a Canada free from discrimination, of a truly just society. However, while this discourse and recognition is well developed across many dimensions of potential discrimination, we repeatedly fall short when it comes to recognizing and affirming the dignity, uniqueness, value and capacity of people living with disabilities and the elderly. For too many people living with disabilities or aging, their experience is one not merely of being pushed into narrow boxes or categories but of something much worse. I ask colleagues here to imagine something. Imagine living a life in which interactions with people in positions of authority and other prominent social institutions often carry the explicit or implicit message that one is an object instead of a subject. All people think of themselves as, and indeed are, the protagonist of their own great story. Persons are not merely the potential recipients of someone else's support. Every person has a potentially heroic story arc of their own, a story arc that involves successes and setbacks and that brings triumphs and contributions that are consequential for the lives of others and for the communities in which they live. Persons with disabilities are persons in this profound sense, yet many forms of discourse, rarely directly but often subtly, deny the agency, power and full humanness of those with disabilities. This is evident in the fact that those with disabilities are the only community wherein facilitated dying is offered to those who are not dying. The implication of this often unsolicited offer of death is not merely that they are better suited to a certain kind of vocation or career path but that these changes in capacity mean their life is no longer worth living, that they are useless and good for nothing. Members may be able to imagine regularly experiencing this kind of discourse directed toward them, the kind of extreme stereotyping and presumption that the famous playwright George Bernard Shaw defended in 1931. In his defence of eugenics, Shaw said, “I don't want to punish anybody, but there are an extraordinary number of people whom I want to kill, not in any unkind or personal spirit, but it must be evident to all of you, you all must know half a dozen people at least who are no use in this world, who are more trouble than they are worth.” There is a direct line between arguments about eugenics and uselessness presented by people like Shaw and the gas chambers, to which many with disabilities and others deemed “more trouble than they are worth” were ultimately consigned. The implication of some utilitarians is that people and things are to be valued based on their usefulness rather than on their inherent qualities. This way of thinking is wrong and dangerous, because it degrades people to something less than the bearers of inherent rights and instead regards them as mere tools for some other purpose. As a friend once told me, “My greatest suffering doesn't come from my disability. It comes from trying to live up to the ideal of independence. It has taken time to realize that I am valuable for who I am and not just what I can do.” Moreover, it is always incorrect to think of any person as useless. Every person bears the capacity to shape the world through their love and connection with others. The process of losing some capacities and developing others can be a difficult and painful transition, but it remains true that all human beings have the power and the capacity to shape the world around them in meaningful ways at all stages of life and at all levels of ability. Many of us will experience this transition. The community of those with disabilities is one that many of us will join later in life. It is very likely that I will one day be living with disabilities, as will many of those currently able-bodied who are listening. I ask members of the House to reflect on what it would be like to be treated as if their life was without value or meaning. They likely would know, at least initially, that this was not true. They would know that they have meaning and power and significance and the will and ability to be part of a community in which they both give and receive love and care. However, the constant, contrary implication, especially from those in power who are supposed to be helping, would be wearing and painful. At some point, because of the social context in which all choices are made, someone might start to believe and accept these lies and contemplate things that they would never have contemplated before. I know that there are some people who deny that this sort of dehumanization happens at all. They are like the people who suppose that racism must not exist because they have never experienced it. If someone is not part of a victim community in question, chances are that they have less familiarity with the phenomenon, but people who doubt these realities need only to open up and listen. Listen first to Miriam Lancaster, a woman from Vancouver in her eighties. Last year around this time, she woke up with severe back pain and was taken to hospital. Miriam was immediately offered MAID. Before any tests, diagnosis or discussion of symptoms, someone took one look at her and asked if she had thought about dying. Miriam made a full recovery. Six weeks later, she was walking her daughter down the aisle. I understand that her daughter joins us on the Hill today. Miriam just celebrated another birthday. In the intervening time, she has travelled the world and even climbed a volcano on horseback. There are many more of these stories. Meet David Baltzer, a Canadian hero from St. Catharines who did two tours of duty in Afghanistan. While struggling with a post-traumatic stress injury, he called Veterans Affairs Canada for help. Instead of receiving the help he was seeking, he received the unprompted suggestion of facilitated death. Consider the story of Heather Hancock, a successful author living with cerebral palsy who had every desire to keep living. She was told by a nurse that she should do the right thing and consider MAID. The nurse told her that she was being selfish and that she was not living but merely existing. There is the well-known case of Christine Gauthier, another heroic former member of the Canadian Armed Forces, and a Paralympian, an accomplished, successful, powerful woman who was simply fighting for a home wheelchair ramp. Instead of giving her the equipment she needed in order to live, bureaucrats proposed facilitated death and offered her the equipment for that instead. Meet Kathrin Mentler. She faced mental health challenges and wanted to become a counsellor in order to help others. The Tyee reported on how she was treated in the midst of crisis: Mentler found herself in crisis and took herself to Vancouver General Hospital's Access and Assessment Centre to get help. “That day my goal was to keep myself safe.”...she says Mentler says she told the counsellor she was scared she’d “never not feel horrible.” She also [discussed] her history of mental illness and self-harm. Mentler says the counsellor then told her the mental health system was “completely overwhelmed,”... “It was pretty disheartening and made me feel helpless,” Mentler says. “I’m coming here because I’m looking for help and you’re telling me there is no help.” That’s when the counsellor [suggested to] Mentler [that she consider] medically assisted suicide. Mentler says she was “shocked” and “sickened” because she came to the Access and Assessment Centre for help, “not for recommendations on how to kill myself.” These stories are not one-offs. They reflect the regular experience of many people with mental health challenges and with disabilities here in Canada, and also the experience of some people who are aging, as they interact with the health care system and other systems that are supposed to be providing them with services. As Krista Carr from Inclusion Canada told the finance committee, “People with disabilities are now very much afraid, in many circumstances, to show up in the health care system with regular health concerns.” She later identified that she heard complaints from people with disabilities on a weekly basis about this problem. This is the sad reality of what has come to happen in our Canadian society. People with challenges but also with immense potential and capacity are repeatedly being told when they try to access unrelated public services that they should die instead. On their behalf, I am begging colleagues in the House to listen to these cries for help and to work constructively on solutions. Moved and angered by these stories, I have brought forward Bill C-260, a bill that would begin the vitally necessary process of affirming the dignity of the human person confronted by MAID coercion. The current law allows people to pursue MAID, and it defines who can provide MAID, but the law is completely silent on the question of who can propose MAID. Due to this gap in the law, anyone can propose MAID: a counsellor, social worker, teacher, professor, parole officer, veterans services worker or CRA call centre employee. Literally anyone in a position of authority could tell a person seeking help that maybe they should die instead. This gap in the law has left the door wide open for people who are seeking unrelated public services, who do not want to die, to have death repeatedly pushed on them, simply because of characteristics like age or disability. My bill seeks to begin the necessary process of filling this gap in the law by proposing legal limitations on what MAID and when MAID should be proposed to a person seeking public services. Now, my bill is narrow in scope. It provides that a person cannot have MAID proposed to them by a bureaucrat in a case where they have not first asked for information about it. It only applies in cases involving a government employee in a position of authority or trust, and it exempts doctors and nurses. In cases where a bureaucrat in a position of authority or trust proposes MAID to a person who is not seeking it, Bill C-260 introduces a new Criminal Code offence, punishable on summary conviction. The penalty is minimal. The goal is not to punish people but to establish a standard and deter behaviour so that people with disabilities, the elderly and all Canadians can access public services without being treated as useless or expendable. This bill is indeed modest. It starts a conversation and it establishes a minimum standard, something that all members of Parliament, I hope, should be able to get behind. If people do not think that Veterans Affairs Canada, caseworkers and other bureaucrats should be, out of the blue, proposing MAID to those who are seeking access to other public services, then please vote for Bill C-260 at second reading. Since tabling this bill, I have had a lot of conversations with veterans, people with disabilities and groups that represent them. Many people are very supportive of this bill. The biggest complaint I have heard about Bill C-260 is from those in these communities who say that the bill does not go far enough. MAID coercion is a massive problem for these communities and the bill's limitations and exemptions, particularly the blanket exemption for doctors and nurses, leave open the possibility for MAID coercion to continue in many contexts. Now, from my end, I actually completely agree with those who would like this bill to go further. I agree that this bill does not address every instance of MAID coercion, and that there are many instances of coercive behaviour involving those who are not included in this bill. I also see this bill as a meaningful step forward. Today, people with certain characteristics are bombarded with the suggestion that they die, suggestions potentially coming from anyone and everyone who is responsible for offering them public services. My bill would significantly narrow the number of instances in which these suggestions can be made. It is an important step because it reduces that pressure and introduces a new concept into law, providing additional protection, even if it leaves certain kinds of situations unaddressed. Bill C-260 does not seek to prohibit all conduct that is problematic or potentially problematic. It does not pretend to. However, the scope of this bill is designed to respond to the realities of this Parliament. I cannot pass a bill without at least some votes on the government's side. I have proposed therefore a bill that I believe is realistically calibrated to the sentiments here and a bill that would have a chance of helping us take a step towards confronting this problem. I would also note that action to confront MAID coercion involving licensed professionals like doctors and nurses is possible at the provincial level. I was very pleased to see the passage of Bill 18 in Alberta, for example, which goes further than Bill C-260 by using provincial jurisdiction over health care to introduce protections which likely would not receive enough support to pass at the federal level. I want to congratulate justice minister Mickey Amery and all who have made this happen. Alberta is a safer place for all people as a result of their work. I hope that legislators in other provinces will join the fight against MAID coercion with their own provincial changes. Every legislator must look realistically at the chances of getting something passed in the place where they serve. Some provincial environments provide an easier context for more action. I hope that these opportunities will exist here in the near future, but I am doing my best with what we have for the time being. The work of a legislator is always to try to turn their visions of an ideal society into practical and incremental steps towards a better world. I would like to see a society in which the dignity of the human person is always recognized and defended, but piling all aspects of such a vision into one piece of legislation is not the most productive way to move forward in the real world. Still, there is always the possibility of amendments that remove or adjust exemptions, and I will be supportive of those amendments as long as they do not imperil the bill as a whole. I invite those, who wish we had gone further, to support us at second reading and to make their case for those amendments when we come to committee. However, we need to win this vote in order for us to have that opportunity. This is where high principle meets the world of practical politics until, perhaps, the configuration of Parliament allows us to do more. For my part, I will always defend the immutable dignity of the human person: the simple idea that human rights are for humans, including the elderly, the sick, those with mental health challenges, those with disabilities, the very old and the very young. This is something that a truly just society must ultimately recognize.
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