44th Parl. 1st Sess.
February 13, 2023 11:00AM
Madam Speaker, it is important to outline what we are talking about here today: Bill C-39. Currently, due to Bill C-7, the Criminal Code explicitly states that, when it comes to MAID, mental illness is not to be considered an illness, disease or disability. However, when Liberals passed Bill C-7 two years ago, it had a sunset clause, and this is an important clarification. That means an important guardrail protecting those with mental illness from being eligible to seek MAID during times of depression or other crisis would expire two years after that bill passed, which means it is set to expire next month.
Now the Liberals, having heard the outcry from across the country, from the medical community and those serving the folks with mental illness, have introduced Bill C-39. This is a last-minute attempt to save face by extending the prohibition on MAID for mental illness for one more year. That is not good enough.
Conservatives have been united in our opposition to expanding the Liberal government’s medical assistance in dying regime to Canadians with the sole underlying condition of mental illness. We do not believe that medical assistance in dying is an acceptable solution to mental illness and psychological suffering. Our health care system should help people find hope when they need to live and not assist in their deaths.
Allowing MAID for people with mental illnesses such as depression blurs the line between suicide assistance and suicide prevention. Experts have been clear that expanding eligibility for medical assistance in dying to Canadians living with mental illness cannot be done safely. It is impossible to determine the irremediability of an individual case of mental illness.
For example, Dr. Sonu Gaind, who is the physician chair of the MAID team at the Humber River Hospital in Toronto, where he is chief of psychiatry, states, “I know that some assessors think they can make those predictions of irremediability in mental illness, and some assessors think they can separate what we consider traditional suicidality from what’s fuelling psychiatric MAID requests. And on both counts they’re wrong. The evidence shows that.”
Andrew Lawton, Canadian columnist and journalist, wrote a harrowing personal article two years ago, stating:
If Bill C-7 were the law of the land a decade ago, I’d probably be dead....
In 2010, I nearly succeeded in committing suicide. My battle with depression was worsening, and I was losing. Miraculously, I pulled through: I count my lack of success in that attempt as my happiest failure, for which I’m grateful to God’s intervention and a team of dedicated healthcare practitioners.
It’s saddening to think that under different circumstances, these practitioners could have been the ones killing me rather than saving me....
Bill C-7 undermines years of attention and billions of dollars of funding to bolster mental illness treatments and supports, including, ironically, suicide prevention and awareness campaigns and programs.
This bill kills hope and reinforces the flawed belief afflicting those with mental illness, that life is not worth living and that one’s circumstances cannot improve.
Every time I have risen to speak on these bills, that has been my emphasis as well: Life is worth living. Every life has dignity and value. We need to be far better as a nation at communicating that to those who need to hear it the most.
Two years ago my friend Lia shared her story with Canadians. She said, “I was 15 when I first tried to kill myself and I attempted suicide seven times in the years that followed...I’m speaking about my mental health struggles because I’m scared that doctors could soon be able to end the lives of people suffering with mental illness - people like me. To be honest, if medically assisted suicide had been available when I was in university, I would have used it to end my suffering as soon as I could.”
This is Lia's call to parliamentarians: “I don’t need someone to tell me how to die, I need someone to tell me to stay.”
The House should be writing laws that instill the value of life and that there is no question this is what we value. Laws need to encourage people to stay rather than seek to end their lives.
Dr. John Maher is an Ontario psychiatrist and editor-in-chief of the Journal of Ethics in Mental Health. Dr. Maher has highlighted that the wait times for mental health treatment in Ontario programs are up to five years long, and that one of his patients recently told him that he would like assisted suicide because he believed that nobody loved him.
Dr. Maher also rejects assisted suicide as a solution for mental illness by stating the following:
You're assisting someone in the completion of their suicide. The doctor is the sanitized gun...I'm not at all disagreeing that there are people who have an irremediable illness. What I defy you or any other person in the universe to prove to me is that it's this person in front of you.
The suicide prevention community has also pointed out the harsh reality for costs. Shawn Krausert, the executive director of the Canadian Association for Suicide Prevention, testified at committee and said the following:
Ending the life of someone with complex mental health problems is simpler and likely much less expensive than offering outstanding ongoing care. This creates a perverse incentive for the health system to encourage the use of MAID at the expense of providing adequate resources to patients, and that outcome is unacceptable.
Most Canadians do not support expanding MAID to those with mental illness as the only underlying condition. Today, a survey was published in which a mere 30% of Canadians support MAID for those who have a mental illness.
I can assure members that, among my constituents, that number is far lower. The vast majority of my constituents want the federal government to focus on helping people live well and to invest in palliative care and suicide prevention instead of assisted suicide.
Some of the petitions I have tabled here over the years were sent to me by constituents who have recognized that suicide is the leading cause of death for Canadians between the ages of 10 and 19. They are specifically calling on the government to protect Canadians struggling with mental illness by facilitating treatment and recovery, not death.
I agree with my constituents, and the majority of Canadians, that the government should withdraw this bill entirely and table a bill that permanently removes the extension and expansion of assisted suicide for mental illness when it is an underlying condition.
I want to end with some words from my friend Lia. She says:
I want to say right now, to whoever might need to hear this: death doesn’t have to be the answer. It takes work. It takes time. It takes others. And it's complicated. But there is hope...I’m sharing my story because I’m not the only one who has more to live for. There are people in your life who do too. As someone who struggles with mental illness, I don’t need someone to tell me how to die. I need someone to tell me to stay.
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Madam Speaker, I think that is what the article by my friend Mr. Lawton was talking about. It was the very fact that, under this new regime that comes into place a year from now, he would be eligible for assisted suicide. He is quite convinced of that. It is not clear to him in the law, and it is not clear to me in the law, that, if he were seeking help in 2023 rather than in 2010, there would be any obligation for the health care system to promote life rather than to fulfill his wishes to die. These were, in fact, his wishes at the time when he attempted suicide. That is the way I read the law. That is the way Andrew Lawton reads the law, and I have no evidence to support the opposite of that.
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Madam Speaker, yes, I agree that we need to ensure we have the supports in place to support those who are going through mental health challenges, but I also think we need to address some of the underlying causes.
Why is there a mental health crisis in this country? After eight years of the Liberal government, out-of-control inflation, cost of living going up dramatically and a general sense of the country not progressing and not flourishing have led to a significant increase in the mental health crisis across this country. We have to ensure we bring hope to the country and to Canadians, and work to improve the general mental health of Canadians across the board.
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Madam Speaker, the disability community has reached out to me repeatedly over the last number of years, given the regime on euthanasia and how there are two classes of citizens in this country when it comes to the eligibility for MAID. There are those who will be offered help and those who will not be offered help. That is a troubling thing.
I believe that the health care system in this country should be out of the business of MAID and should be in the business of helping to cure people. I understand the Supreme Court rulings, but the Supreme Court never said anything about having to have the health care system assist suicide or euthanizing people in this country. I think we can bring forward a system that works to ensure that life is valued in this country and that folks with disabilities feel that they are not being burdens on our society.
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