44th Parl. 1st Sess.
February 15, 2023 02:00PM
- Feb/15/23 3:09:59 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, another day and another Liberal is caught breaking ethics laws. This time it is the Parliamentary Secretary to the Prime Minister who was caught using his position to further the interests of a company. Now the Liberals are so brazen in their law-breaking that they have a member of the ethics committee who is breaking ethics laws.
These Liberals think they are above the law. For everyday Canadians there are consequences when they break the law. So why does the Parliamentary Secretary to the Prime Minister get to keep his job after he broke the law?
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- Feb/15/23 3:11:34 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, maybe when Canadians are caught breaking the law, the government is okay if they just say “sorry”.
After eight years of the Prime Minister, Canadians do not expect that the Prime Minister will take any action when his ministers and parliamentary secretaries break the law, because he would have to hold himself to a high standard as well, having twice been caught breaking ethics laws. It is a cabinet of serial lawbreakers, with the trade minister, the intergovernmental affairs minister, the former finance minister and even the Prime Minister.
Both the Prime Minister and his parliamentary secretary broke the law. Who is going to resign first?
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Mr. Speaker, I am rising today to speak to Bill C-39, which would delay, by one year, the Liberal government's goal of extending medically facilitated death to Canadians living with mental illness.
Extending medically facilitated death to vulnerable Canadians living with mental illness is unjust now and it will be unjust one year from now.
The government's MAID policy has been driven by radical groups. Their end goal is state-provided death on demand to anyone for any reason. These groups have almost constant and unfettered access to the Liberal government, and this is clear because this extreme expansion is backed by radicals within the Liberal government and Liberal-appointed radicals within the Senate.
At the MAID committee, one of this sort remarked that MAID should be available for babies. How far has our collective respect for dignity of the human person fallen that such a grisly statement could be made without rebuke? Many have said that we are at the end of a slippery slope, but it is clear that if the Liberals continue to take their marching orders from groups like this, they are nowhere near done.
By law, to be eligible for MAID, a person must have a grievous and irremediable medical condition that is incurable and in an advanced state of irreversible decline. That means that, to qualify, a MAID assessor must be satisfied that the person's condition will not get better. We know it is impossible to predict whether or not a person suffering from a mental illness will get better, so it is not possible to determine irremediability.
Dr. John Maher, a clinical psychiatrist and medical ethicist, said, “Psychiatrists don't know and can't know who will get better and live decades of good life. Brain diseases are not liver diseases.”
MAID decisions in cases of mental disorders will be based on “hunches and guesswork that could be wildly inaccurate”, according to Dr. Mark Sinyor, a professor of psychiatry at the University of Toronto and a psychiatrist who specializes in the treatment of adults with complex mood and anxiety disorders. He also said that “they could be making an error 2% of the time or 95% of the time.”
The Liberal government is willing to say that Canadians with mental illness will not get better and then will end their lives, which could be wrong 95% of the time. Make no mistake, if the government goes ahead with its expansion of MAID for mental illness, people who would have gotten better will not get the chance, because they will be dead.
Right now, 6,000 people with the most severe forms of mental illness are waiting up to five years to get the specialized treatments they need to reduce symptoms, learn to cope and feel better. Instead of working to better those symptoms, to give people the help they need when they need it the most, the government is striving to offer them death.
When appearing before the Senate, Dr. John Maher said, “Clinical relationships are already being profoundly undermined. My patients are saying: ‘Why try to recover when MAID is coming, and I'm going to be able to choose death?’” He goes on to say, “Some of my patients keep asking for MAID while they're actually getting better but can't recognize that yet.”
We need to offer Canadians hope, and not death, when they are in the depths of despair. Under the Liberal government, a wave of hopelessness has spread to every corner of the country, and we are seeing people seeking and being approved for medically facilitated death because they are poor, because they cannot afford adequate care or housing. It has even gotten to the point that veterans have been offered death instead of treatment and support. We must ensure that the dignity of the human person is respected and considered as a foundational block for our society if it is to be a just society.
We have seen the respect for human life, and especially the lives of vulnerable Canadians, threatened by the current government's MAID regime, and that should be weighed against the standard of a society that is right and just, and that measures whether their actions and policies enhance or threaten the dignity inherent in every single person. This is not a dignity that was invented, imagined or assigned by a government, but it can be affirmed or denied.
What we are seeing in Canada is a government that is willing to offer death before it is willing to offer adequate care, access to timely treatment or even a life that is affordable to live. People are asking food banks to help them access death. It is an absolute disgrace that life in Canada has come to that.
That is why the preferential option for the vulnerable must be in mind as we make any decision in this place. Does this protect, or attack, the vulnerable? Does this enhance, or threaten, the dignity of the vulnerable? Does this lift up the vulnerable, or marginalize them further? These are the questions that have to be asked. When it comes to the Liberal government's MAID regime, I will say that it attacks and threatens the vulnerable, threatens their human dignity and marginalizes them further. How could it not, when death is the solution offered to the problems of the most vulnerable people among us?
Throughout this entire process, the government has tried to silence the voices of marginalized Canadians, especially those living with disabilities or mental illness, but it will not silence my voice here today. It will not silence the voices of Conservatives who stand here united in our opposition to expanding medically assisted death for mental illness.
Death is not an acceptable solution to mental illness and psychological suffering. Our health care system should help people. It should help them find the hope and resilience they need in order to live, and not facilitate their deaths. We continue to be, as we always have been, called to attend to the lives of the most vulnerable people and their preferential option in life. That is to listen to them, to include them, to support them, to lift them up, to help them and to love them, not to end their lives.
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Mr. Speaker, I am having a really hard time reconciling how that member and his party prop up a government that did absolutely nothing to increase health care transfers to our provinces, and a Prime Minister whom he supports, without exception, in a coalition deal until 2025, in which the Prime Minister, the leader of the NDP—
An hon. member: Oh, oh!
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Mr. Speaker, this member and his party give carte blanche to a Prime Minister who has been an abject failure in supporting the health care needs of our provinces, and that is whom the member votes to support.
While we have been very clear about our position on improving health care supports, treatment supports and mental health supports, that member is supporting a Prime Minister who has done anything but, and who refused to even meet with the premiers and the health ministers. That is what I am having a hard time reconciling.
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Mr. Speaker, it is incredibly important that we provide the support. That should be the focus of the government. What it is undertaking with this process is not a requirement but a rapid and unnecessary expansion. Frankly, it devalues the human person and those who are living with any of the challenges the member opposite mentioned. It is incredibly important that we find ways to support those people to help them heal instead of finding ways to accelerate their deaths.
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Madam Speaker, I want to go back to some of the words of an expert I quoted. Dr. John Maher, who is a clinical psychiatrist and medical ethicist, said that “Psychiatrists don't know and can't know who will get better and live decades of good life.” We had another expert say that they “could be making an error 2% of the time or 95% of the time.”
It is so important to make sure that, in matters of life and death, we are correct 100% of the time. We have to stand up for life.
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