SoVote

Context: House Hansard - 199 - May/17/23

May/17/23 5:02:11 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, there is so much to unpack in that. Perhaps the member needs to read the amendments that were done at committee, which include a clause that would ensure that indigenous people's section 35 rights are still in place. There is nothing virtue signalling in this bill, and I am sure the hon. member does not want to forget about the 75% of Canadian suicide victims who died by firearms. This bill would tackle suicides, intimate partner violence and gun crime. There are many aspects to firearms deaths in this country, and that is why I am proud of the work we are doing in this bill, which would actually save lives.

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Ms. Kristina Michaud (Avignon—La Mitis—Matane—Matapédia, BQ)

May/17/23 5:03:02 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I want to thank my colleague for her co-operation throughout the study of this bill. I really appreciated working with her and her team. I know that she has been working for better gun control in this country for a number of years. It was clearly the government's intention to ban assault weapons. The government's first attempt failed. The second attempt was somewhat watered down compared to the first. As we have discussed at length, the proposed definition is prospective, meaning that hundreds of assault-style weapons remain in circulation in the country. In response to that, the minister told us that he was going to re-establish the Canadian firearms advisory committee and ask for a recommendation on how it could classify firearms. Handing this over to experts is not a bad idea. However, of the 482 firearms, the government itself identified those that could potentially be used for hunting. It identified a dozen. Why not immediately ban the other 470 using an order in council? That is the proposal I made to the minister. I would like to know what she thinks.

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Ms. Pam Damoff

May/17/23 5:04:17 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I want to thank my colleague. I wish I could answer her question in French. However, with regard to the firearms in question, as the hon. member knows, a number of those were included in the order in council, which was done in May 2020, and we know that the technical definition in the bill will ensure that future firearms are caught. For the 482, there would be the reconstituted firearms advisory council that would look at those to provide advice to the government, moving forward, to determine which of those should be included.

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Mr. Don Davies (Vancouver Kingsway, NDP)

May/17/23 5:05:14 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I represent an urban riding in a major municipality, and I think that there is a pretty broad consensus in my constituency that people are in favour of strong, fair and rational gun legislation and restrictions. I think they understand the connection between the proliferation of guns and associated violence that comes from it, but at the same time, we do have a healthy number of people in my riding who engage in sport shooting or hunting, even though they live in an urban setting. I wonder if my hon. colleague can tell us, as the first iteration of the bill did not draw a very good line in that regard, what improvements she would point to in the bill that would give assurance to people who do use firearms responsibly for hunting or sport purposes that they will be able to access the equipment they need to carry on with their legitimate activities.

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Ms. Pam Damoff

May/17/23 5:06:16 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, the hon. member mentioned that a number of Canadians feel that we are taking strong action on guns. How many are in support? It is 84% of Canadians who are saying that we are on the right track, including a majority of rural Canadians. With regards to sport shooting, there is an exemption in the bill for those who participate in or are on a pathway to Olympic sports. As the hon. member likely knows, there will be regulations that will be developed around that, but the pathway is only for those who are on track to participate in the Olympics or the Paralympics. Nothing in the bill would impact those who are in the biathlon sport. That is what is in the bill, and that is what the member can tell his constituents.

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Mr. Lloyd Longfield (Guelph, Lib.)

May/17/23 5:07:14 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I thank the hon. parliamentary secretary for all of her work on this. The member mentioned how difficult these discussions have been to get to the real crux of the matter. I am looking at a discussion I had with one of my constituents on December 2 of last year. He was talking about paintball cases, that 2,000 paintballs were $150 versus magfed at $30, and that the airsoft community had not been consulted at that time. He had served in the military. He knows that AR-15s should not be available anywhere in Canada, so he was approaching it from the recreational community saying that, at the time, we had not consulted them. Could the hon. member comment on how much work there has been to get to the right level of consultation with the right people?

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Ms. Pam Damoff

May/17/23 5:08:07 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, airsoft industry representatives were extremely productive in their discussions with the government and with the committee. They were willing to work with the government to see their sport regulated. I had a number of conversations, as I know a number of members in this House did, with representatives of the airsoft industry. We will work with them. They are supportive of having a minimum age to purchase airsoft, and around transportation and storage. I commend the airsoft industry for the way it worked with the government. As members know, the bill before us removed the prohibition for airsoft guns thanks to the NDP members, who put forward an amendment that was passed at committee.

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Mr. Glen Motz (Medicine Hat—Cardston—Warner, CPC)

May/17/23 5:09:07 p.m.
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Re: Bill C-21

Mr. Speaker, unfortunately, I had the displeasure of sitting through the public safety committee and listening to a lot of the rhetoric that came from the other side, both NDP and Liberal, on this bill. Contrary to public opinion, it does not improve public safety. Contrary to the rhetoric coming from the parliamentary secretary, it does not improve public safety. We did not hear from one group of individuals who supported red flag laws. In fact, PolySeSouvient, who were big fans of the Liberals up until the Liberals refused to listen to them, and 20 other national women's groups have asked to please not invoke red flag laws in Bill C-21, because they do not work. They put women victims at risk. I stood up and said that, from my experience, the current law works and it works well. Why are the Liberals so dogmatic and not listening to the Canadian public? We know the answer, because that is what they always do. What is the explanation for why the Liberals will not listen to Canadians? Women's groups that used to support the government are saying to please remove red flag laws from this bill. Why have the Liberals not done that?

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Ms. Pam Damoff

May/17/23 5:10:20 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I will correct the hon. member. We did hear, at committee, from Doctors for Protection from Guns, which did support red flag laws. I would also remind the hon. member, when we are discussing red flags and other things to protect women, that he seems to ignore the fact that, in my riding of Oakville North—Burlington, at Halton Women's Place, the only women who go to the shelter when firearms are involved are married to police officers. The hon. member has claimed that individuals who were coming forward were actually making false claims with no evidence. He said his changes would have lowered the chance of those coming forward for nefarious reasons to make claims that are false. Women who come forward with claims of violence in the home because of firearms are not making malicious claims. To try to belittle them is offensive.

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Mr. Blaine Calkins (Red Deer—Lacombe, CPC)

May/17/23 5:11:22 p.m.
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Re: Bill C-5 Bill C-21

Mr. Speaker, I cannot say that I am happy to be rising today to discuss this piece of legislation, but I am happy to be rising as a law-abiding firearms owner to defend my fellow law-abiding firearms owners. How did we get here? I will put things in context so the people who might be watching at home know whom they are listening to. I am a member of Parliament for an urban-rural split riding in central Alberta. Half of my constituents live in Red Deer, the third-largest city in Alberta, and the other half live on a first nation reserve, or in a rural setting in Red Deer County, Lacombe County or Ponoka County, or in a small town, city or village therein. I would consider the people I represent to be honest, hard-working, law-abiding folks who want their tax dollars spent wisely and want the freedom to pursue whatever they want to pursue in life. Many of them pursue various things that involve firearms, including hunting, farming on farms like the one I grew up on, where firearms are just a tool and an everyday part of life, or sport shooting. This is very popular in my constituency. There are numerous stores and vendors in central Alberta that supply firearms, ammunition and parts because of the demand that is there. I can tell members that we do not have the problems that my colleague who just spoke talked about in her large urban centre, because we respect the law. We put policies in place at the provincial level, and when we are the governing party, we put laws in place that actually crack down on criminals. That is where the actual issue lies. I can assure Canadians who might be watching at home that the firearms I own are doing nothing right now. They do not do anything until someone picks them up. The issue at hand is violent crime and who has access to firearms. There are numerous provisions in this bill, Bill C-21, that do not address, penalize or in any way affect the outcome of dealing with the wrong people getting a hold of firearms. How did we get here? Over the course of the preceding decades, Canada was a country that was a rugged place to settle, and it is still a rugged place for some who live in rural areas or adjacent to wild areas or who are farming, involved in forestry, or doing something as seemingly innocuous as keeping beehives. Anybody watching at home who grew up with cartoon books would know that Winnie-the-Pooh was addicted to honey. This is not by chance. Bears often frequent these places, and good, honest people have bought firearms to protect themselves, many of whom were caught up in the order in council that came out a number of years ago. It all started in the 1930s. If we go back that far, every single firearm and handgun in this country has been put in a registry, but that does not stop criminals from obtaining guns illegally. The government of the day, whenever it is Liberal or Liberal-leaning, seems to want to blame the law-abiding citizen, so, for decades, we have had a firearms registry and the government knows where all the lawfully owned handguns in this country are. Changes were brought in back when Jean Chrétien was the prime minister, including a long-gun registry, which was wasteful and ineffective. The government of the day said it would cost only $2 million, but it was actually closer to $2 billion. Of course, it did not do anything to address violent crime. We have seen the current government, in its first mandate, put in place Bill C-75, which basically codified in law bail provisions that would let people out in the shortest amount of time with the smallest number of restrictions, and now we see what has happened with that. What did Bill C-21 originally do? When the members of this House were invited to speak to the bill, it was simply the codification in law of an order in council to ban the transfer of handguns. Then, sneakily, the government decided to table-drop, back in November, a huge stack of amendments that had absolutely nothing to do with handguns. They were all about long guns, and of course the government bit off far more than it could chew. The government managed to alienate almost all of its voting base when it comes to indigenous Canadians, who were offended by the fact that the firearms used by indigenous people were largely going to be caught up in amendment G-46, taking away their ability to use that firearm. There was also an evergreen clause in G-4, and I am sorry to report that there is a new evergreen clause put in place that does virtually the same thing, with a minor exception, which I will explain in a few minutes, when I get back to what the problem actually is with the government's notions going forward on its new evergreen clause. We all remember what happened. It was pretty obvious, because we heard the recordings from the Mass Casualty Commission. The government actually interfered. It took this mass casualty event in Nova Scotia and interfered in the investigation by demanding that the officers who were investigating at the time turn over information to advance a political agenda of the government of the day. We know it is not about evidence. It is not evidence-based policy-making; it is policy-based evidence-making and evidence-finding, even if it interferes with a police investigation. That is why there is very little trust by law-abiding firearms owners in the intentions of the Liberal government, which is supported by the NDP, and what it is doing. What is the problem? The problem is violent crime. In the last eight years, violent crime has risen because of the provisions that have been passed by the government when it had a majority and with the support of other left-leaning parties in this place. They passed numerous pieces of legislation, such as Bill C-75 and Bill C-5, that have basically eliminated any consequences whatsoever for people who commit crimes, so much so that violent crime in the last eight years is up 32% over what it was when the Prime Minister and his government inherited the government offices of this place. More astonishing is this number: 94% increase in gang-related homicides. One would think that an almost doubling of the number of homicides by gang members would trigger a response from the government to crack down on organized crime, but it actually has done the opposite. The passages and clauses in the Criminal Code that would deal with people who are repeat violent offenders have largely been removed, as well as any semblance of a minimum sentence. I am not even talking about mandatory minimum sentences put in place by Stephen Harper when he was prime minister, and by the way crime went down over those 10 years, but I am getting to the point of the fact that numerous basic minimum sentences were removed. These were put in place by people like Pierre Elliott Trudeau and Jean Chrétien. Of the 12 firearms-related clauses in that piece of legislation, 11 were actually put in place by previous Liberal governments, and the current version of the Liberal government has removed even the most basic minimum sentences for violent crime, including smuggling, firing a gun irresponsibly or even holding a gun to somebody's head for the purpose of extortion. It has removed any mandatory jail time whatsoever for those. That is the tone and the signal Liberals have sent to the country. Why would criminals not want to increase their activity? There are no consequences, and this is the problem. I will give an example of the illogic of what the government is doing right now. According to the RCMP's website, there are approximately 430 gangs in Canada with 7,000 members in those gangs. If we look at the average number of homicides committed by people associated with gangs over the last five or six years, it is about 50% of murders. Fifty per cent of murders are committed by gang members, or about 125 a year. There are 2.2 million licensed gun owners in this country. If we look over that same time period, we will see that they are charged for homicide about 12 times a year. That is 12 out of 2.2 million people versus 125 out of 7,000 people. Who does the government go after? It goes after the 2.2 million. It does not make any sense whatsoever. If we do the math, a gang member is 3,300 times more likely to commit murder with a firearm than a law-abiding firearm owner is, yet the government focuses only on the law-abiding firearm owner. Gary Mauser, professor emeritus, did an analysis for Statistics Canada that shows that Canadians who are not licensed firearms owners are still three times more likely to commit a homicide than a vetted, licensed gun owner is. For the people who are watching at home, the safest people in Canada for them to be with are legally vetted, law-abiding firearm owners who, at any time, could have their firearms taken away with any complaint lodged against them. That means that every firearm owner meticulously follows the laws of storage, the laws of transportation and the laws of safe discharge. As a matter of fact, we jokingly quip sometimes that gun control meetings are about making sure one's muzzle is always pointed downrange. That is what gun control is to a law-abiding gun owner. We follow all the rules because we do not want to risk losing our privileges, because the fact is that every firearm in Canada is illegal unless it is in the possession of somebody with a licence who is authorized to have that firearm. We have to go through a renewal process every five years, during which our entire history, including our mental health history, our medical history and anything that might have happened before the courts is reviewed in detail. We wait months to get our licence renewed. Sometimes it is not renewed on time. This puts us in a situation, as law-abiding firearm owners, where we are now in possession of our firearms, which were legal one day, but of which, because of the incompetence of the government to process an application on time, we are now technically, according to the law, illegally in possession. We actually had a clause, when Stephen Harper was the prime minister, where people had a six-month grace period. I am very frustrated by the removal of that grace period, and I will get to that in a minute. In committee, Dr. Caillin Langmann from McMaster University basically laid it out for everybody to see. His brief states: The foregoing research papers are peer reviewed and conclude that Canadian legislation to regulate and control firearm possession and acquisition does not have a corresponding effect on homicide and suicide rates. It also states: I was asked to produce a review paper for the Journal of Preventive Medicine in 2021. This paper entitled, “Suicide, firearms, and legislation: A review of the Canadian evidence” reviewed 13 studies regarding suicide and legislative efforts and found an associated reduction in suicide by firearm in men aged 45 and older but demonstrated an equivalent increase in suicide by other methods such as hanging. Factors such as unemployment, low income, and indigenous populations were associated with suicide rates.... My conclusions are based on sound statistical analysis and information specifically related to Canada. I am not aware of any other Canadian research which uses reliable statistical models to dispute or disagree with my conclusions. The brief also states: Bans of military-appearing firearms, semiautomatic rifles and handguns, short barrel handguns and Saturday night specials in the 1990s has resulted in no associated reduction in homicide rates. To summarize the results, no statistically significant beneficial associations were found between firearms legislation and homicide by firearm, as well as spousal homicide by firearms, and the criminal charge of “Discharge of a Firearm with Intent”.... Other studies have demonstrated agreement with my studies that laws targeting restricted firearms such as handguns and certain semi-automatic and full automatic firearms in Canada also had no associated effect with homicide rates. Canadian studies by Leenaars and Lester 2001, Mauser and Holmes 1992, and McPhedran and Mauser 2013, are all in general agreement with my study. The issue is violent crime. It is about controlling violent criminals, controlling those people. One can control inanimate objects all one wants, but it will not change anything. Therefore, the “who” is not the problem. It is not hunters. Over eight million people in this country hunt and fish, contributing $19 billion annually to the GDP, and the order in council has already banned rifles used for hunting, some that even conservation officers use. I was a conservation officer. I was a national park warden and I was issued firearms for my duties. I was a park ranger in charge of a park in the province of Alberta and I was issued firearms for those duties as well. Every person I dealt with as a conservation officer was at least a camper who had an axe, a fisherman who had a knife or a hunter who had either a rifle or a bow and arrow. I had no trouble with those good people, no trouble whatsoever. We are going to ban the very guns that conservation officers use, but they do not have those firearms. The Yukon government actually had to go around the order in council to buy firearms for its conservation officers, because those are the best firearms available to protect its officers from bears, mountain lions and all of the other issues that conservation officers face, because that is where the real issue lies. It is very clear to me as a hunter, that, with the changes the Liberals have made, they are weasel words, especially the evergreen clause that deals with magazines. I laid it out very clearly at committee that anybody who wants to interpret it that way can say that, as long as a firearm can take a magazine that holds more than five rounds, it shall be banned. After this becomes law, we would end up in a situation in which, with guns that are functionally identical, one from 10 years ago and a new firearm, one would be prohibited and the other would still be legal. This is because of the clear lack of knowledge and understanding, when it comes to firearms, of people who do not own guns, making laws that simply do not work. We are going to have that scenario again. However, if people think their gun is safe because they have an older gun that is not included in the new evergreen clause, they should think again, because the firearms committee that would be struck would still have the same authority to do a firearms reference table analysis and ban whatever guns it does not like. I have news for everybody in this room. If we look at all of the hunting regulations in all of the provinces and territories in this country, a hunting rifle is a rifle that is in the hands of a hunter, used for the purposes of the hunt. It does not matter what it looks like; it just matters what the calibre of the bullet is, so the animal can be safely dispatched. I could go on for literally a couple more hours and talk about the end of cowboy mounted shooting, cowboy action shooting, IPSC, all of these sports for all of these good people. They are mostly Filipinos there, by the way, when I go to an IPSC event. They are people who have moved here from a country that never allowed them to own firearms, but they have come here and taken up this sport and activity. They are frustrated because, when we take away the ability to transfer these handguns between law-abiding citizens, it will be the end of thousands of people's enjoyment of the sports that involve handguns. I look forward to answering some hopefully logical questions from around the room. Before I conclude, I move: That the motion be amended by deleting all the words after the word “That” and substituting the following: “Bill C-21, An Act to amend certain Acts and to make certain consequential amendments (firearms), be not now read a third time, but be referred back to the Standing Committee on Public Safety and National Security for the purpose of reconsidering clauses 0.1, 1.1 and 17, with a view to ensure that the government cannot take away hunting rifles from law-abiding farmers, hunters and Indigenous peoples.”

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The Deputy Speaker

May/17/23 5:31:11 p.m.
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The amendment is in order. It being 5:32 p.m., the House will now proceed to the consideration of Private Members' Business as listed on today's Order Paper.

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Hon. Ed Fast (Abbotsford, CPC)

May/17/23 5:32:35 p.m.
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Re: Bill C-7 Bill C-314 Bill C-14

moved that Bill C-314, an act to amend the Criminal Code (medical assistance in dying), be read the second time and referred to a committee. He said: Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to speak to my private member's bill, Bill C-314, the mental health protection act. In its very essence, this bill is about reaffirming the dignity and worth of each and every human life. It is about recognizing that it is the most vulnerable among us, the disabled and the mentally ill, to whom we owe the greatest duty: to defend and protect their lives and to provide them with every possible opportunity to live life to the fullest. Medically assisted suicide was legalized in Canada in 2015 by the Supreme Court's Carter decision and later under the Liberal government's Bill C-14. Under this legislation, medical assistance in dying, or MAID, as it is commonly called, was strictly limited to those consenting adults who had an incurable disease that caused enduring, intolerable suffering that could not be alleviated, and where natural death was reasonably foreseeable, which they call the foreseeability test. At the time, the government and its supportive stakeholders assured Canadians that this was not a slippery slope, where the scope of MAID would continually be expanded to include more and more vulnerable Canadians. However, not surprisingly, in the intervening eight years since the Carter decision, the government has begun to expand Canada's MAID regime to include more and more defenceless Canadians, most particularly those living with disabilities. In late 2019, a Quebec lower court judge in the Truchon case ruled that the foreseeability test I just mentioned was unconstitutional, requiring Parliament to respond with additional legislation. Sadly, the Liberal government chose not to appeal the Truchon case to the Supreme Court of Canada, presumably because the decision lined up with the Prime Minister's intent to dramatically expand assisted suicide to other vulnerable Canadians. This leaves us with the perverse situation in which the Supreme Court of Canada, the highest court in the country, has never been allowed to opine on whether the reasonable foreseeability test is constitutional. In any event, the Liberal government responded to Truchon by tabling Bill C-7, which initially eliminated the foreseeability test but expressly excluded mentally ill persons from being caught up in its MAID regime. Here is what the justice minister said at the time: The fact that there would be risk of ending the life of a person whose symptoms would have improved...is, in part, why we are of the view that it is safest not to permit MAID on the sole basis of mental illness.... There is also ongoing uncertainty and disagreement as to the potential impact on suicide prevention if MAID were made available to this group. He went on to say: ...there is no consensus among experts on whether and how to proceed with MAID on the basis of mental illness alone. On a question of such importance and with so much uncertainty and expert disagreement, it is incumbent upon us to proceed with caution and prudence. Those were our justice minister’s views until the unelected Senate suddenly introduced an amendment that expanded MAID to those Canadians whose sole underlying condition is mental illness. Sadly, the justice minister and the government accepted the amendment without protest and, overnight, became zealous proponents of assisted death for the mentally ill. What happened to the caution and prudence the minister was preaching? What about the impact on suicide prevention the minister was so concerned about? What happened to his view that it was safest not to permit MAID on the sole basis of mental illness? I agree with the Minister of Justice on one thing, which is that, as he has said, this is indeed a complex issue and is deeply personal. It is deeply personal because it involves life, a precious human life. I would remind the minister and his government that the issue is also profoundly simple; that is, the principle that all life, all human life is precious and worthy of defence and protection, especially for those who do not have the ability to speak for themselves and have no one to speak for them. One of the primary functions of government is to protect its citizens, to protect life. In fact, the right to life is expressly enshrined in section 7 of our Charter of Rights. Sadly, the government's Bill C-7 fails to protect the lives of our most vulnerable. It removes the critical safeguards that the original euthanasia legislation included in response to the Carter decision. Removing those safeguards will have irreversible consequences for those who suffer from mental illnesses like depression. What is equally disturbing is that the Liberal government has also signalled its intention to extend the so-called “treatment option” to minor children. That would arguably make Canada the most expansive, most liberal, assisted suicide jurisdiction in the world. Clearly we are on the slippery slope many of us warned about. Canadians have a right to conclude that the Liberal government has gone too far and too fast in its zeal to implement and expand the scope of assisted death. My bill will reverse this momentum and repeal the government's decision to extend MAID to the mentally ill. It will put a full stop to the expansion of assisted suicide to mentally disordered persons. Let me be clear. My bill does not in any way reverse the rest of Canada’s MAID regime. Assisted death will remain available for those suffering from irremediable, incurable and intolerable illnesses and diseases. My bill is simply focused on reversing the government’s actions in expanding assisted suicide to include the mentally ill. It would arrest Canada’s slide into normalizing assisted death as an alternative treatment option, something so many of us had predicted would happen. The evidence from mental health experts is very clear. Contrary to what our justice minister is now saying, there is absolutely no consensus in Canada that the mentally ill should be covered by Canada’s medically assisted death regime. In fact, here is what experts and other stakeholders in the mental health community are saying. John Maher, psychiatrist with Canadian Mental Health Association, states that: Inducement to suicide while simultaneously denying mental health care to two-thirds of Canadians who urgently need it is an unconscionable failing. Directly undermining suicide prevention efforts is an insidious and ablest perversion of our mental health care duty. Drs. Ramona Coelho and Catherine Ferrier, co-founders of Physicians Together with Vulnerable Canadian, penned a statement that was endorsed by over 1,000 physicians. This is part of what it said, “Given that there is no medical evidence to reliably predict which patients with a mental illness will not get better, MAID for mental illness will end the lives of patients who would have recovered…Medicine …would fail in its mission if it were to deliberately end the lives of patients living with mental illness… Legislators must work towards safeguarding the lives of the most vulnerable including those placed at a greater disadvantage because of mental illness.” Dr. Sonu Gaind, chief of the Department of Psychiatry at Sunnybrook Hospital, Toronto, stated, “The Ministers have provided false reassurances that we can somehow separate people who are suicidal from those who are seeking psychiatric euthanasia. That is simply not true. In my opinion, that is dangerous misinformation coming from our federal Minister of Justice and our federal Minister of Mental Health and Addictions providing a false sense of safety that does not exist.” Trudo Lemmens, professor and chair in health law at the University of Toronto, said, “I urge Parliament to take very seriously how offering MAID for mental illness deprives disabled persons, particularly those with mental illness, from equal protection against premature death. Persons experiencing mental illness deserve to be protected against premature death by an unreserved focus on ensuring access to all required health care and social support services. Facilitating their death does exactly the opposite.” Finally, Sephora Tang, psychiatrist and assistant professor in the Department of Psychiatry at University of Ottawa, said, “One cannot prevent suicide while at the same time facilitating it. Placing expectations upon mental health professionals to do both undermines the effective delivery of recovery-oriented mental health care. Canadians deserve to live in a country that is committed to safeguarding the right to life and security of every person. Current MAID legislation fails to achieve this overarching social good.” Even Canada's justice minister has publicly acknowledged the fact that issues such as irremediability, competency and suicidality are not anywhere close to being resolved to justify such a major policy shift in favour of death. Furthermore, medically assisted death flies in the face of the government’s own promotion of suicide prevention programs, including the recent creation of a national 988 suicide hotline. It cannot be both ways. It cannot claim, as the Liberal government has, that it wants to prevent suicide deaths on the one hand, when it actively promotes assisted suicide for the mentally ill on the other. Over the last eight years, many of us have expressed our concern and expectation that the Carter decision and BillC-14 would be expanded by future court decisions, and that these decisions would leave more and more vulnerable populations exposed to the reach of medically assisted suicide. Our concerns were pooh-poohed. We were accused of fearmongering and of misrepresenting the intentions of this Liberal government. Yet, today, the Truchon decision and the travesty of Bill C-7 bear out our concerns. That is why more and more disability groups have set the alarm bells ringing and are vehemently opposing this legislation. They argue that this legislation amounts to a deadly form of discrimination, making it easier for persons with disabilities to die than to live. We are hearing more and more reports of the poor and homeless approaching food banks to ask for assisted death, not because they are suffering from a grievous illness but because they do not want to go hungry and homeless. The headline in the British magazine The Spectator asked last year, “Why is Canada euthanising the poor?” The response from some bioethicists appears to be, “Well, why not?” In fact, a new paper by two bioethicists at the University of Toronto makes the case that euthanizing the poor should be socially acceptable. That is indicative of the path on which our country finds itself. It is terrifying. We also have verified reports of veterans suffering from PTSD who are being counselled by the Liberal government to consider medical assistance in dying rather than being provided with the treatment and supports they need to recover. These are the vulnerable that the Liberal government promised to protect. Canadians have the right to ask whether this government is exercising the requisite caution and care to avoid unnecessary overreach and ensure that MAID is not abused or misapplied. Let me conclude. My private member's bill, Bill C-314 gives all of us parliamentarians an opportunity to take a deep breath and reconsider the perilous road we have embarked upon. As I mentioned, my bill simply reverses the expansion of Canada’s assisted death laws to the mentally ill. At the very least, I would ask my colleagues to allow my bill, at second reading, to go to committee where there could be more discussion. Have we gone too far and too fast with Canada's assisted suicide program? Will we evolve into a culture of death as the preferred option for those who suffer from mental illness or will we choose life? I implore my colleagues to choose life. I wish them much wisdom as they make that choice.

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Mr. Kevin Lamoureux (Parliamentary Secretary to the Leader of the Government in the House of Commons, Lib.)

May/17/23 5:47:54 p.m.
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Re: Bill C-314

Madam Speaker, I appreciate what the member is saying. It is a heavy decision that ultimately does need to be made. There is no question about that. I look at how important it is that we continue to be in touch with the health care professionals, that we continue to be in touch with other jurisdictions and stakeholders, and that we make sure that we continue to move forward. This is very much an emotional issue that people have very strong convictions on. I do not think there is an easy answer to this. From my perspective, I think that we have to continue the dialogue and have more faith in the system. Can he provide his thoughts with respect to that?

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Hon. Ed Fast

May/17/23 5:48:58 p.m.
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Re: Bill C-314

Madam Speaker, I want to thank the member for acknowledging that there is further discussion required on this. That is one of the things I have lamented. Medical assistance in dying has been pushed so far, so quickly, that there has not been the appropriate national discussion, or even the appropriate debate within this House, as to whether we should extend this life-or-death policy to the mentally ill. The stakeholders I quoted represent a very thin slice of the many stakeholders who have written to me. They have said, “Ed, we have not had this discussion. The mental health profession and the stakeholders within the mental health community have not had the debate required to go to this length and extend assisted suicide to the mentally ill.”

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Mr. Luc Thériault (Montcalm, BQ)

May/17/23 5:50:02 p.m.
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Re: Bill C-314

Madam Speaker, as I often say in the House, everyone wants to do the right thing. Everyone has the best of intentions and wants to look out for people's best interests. However, being compassionate does not square with undermining human dignity or a person's capacity for self-determination in a decision as personal as deciding one's death. In his bill, my colleague is telling us that mental illnesses are not considered to be grievous and irremediable medical conditions. However, according to the DSM‑5 definition, a mental disorder is a syndrome characterized by clinically significant disturbance in an individual's cognition, emotion regulation, or behaviour that reflects a dysfunction in the psychological, biological, or development processes underlying mental functioning. Can we really say that is not serious?

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Hon. Ed Fast

May/17/23 5:51:24 p.m.
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Re: Bill C-314

Madam Speaker, I thank the member for his question. I do not quite understand it. He did say that everyone means well. “Everyone means well” is not the appropriate standard to apply here. We are talking about life and death for the most vulnerable in our society. We owe it to the mentally ill and those who have mental disorders to act justly and fairly toward them to give them every opportunity to recover. That has been one of the failures of Canada's MAID regime. We have not provided the social supports and mental health supports to help the Canadians who would consider MAID because they are not getting those supports.

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Mr. Alistair MacGregor (Cowichan—Malahat—Langford, NDP)

May/17/23 5:52:15 p.m.
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Re: Bill C-314

Madam Speaker, I would like to thank my colleague from Abbotsford for the introduction of his bill. I was a member of the Special Joint Committee on Medical Assistance in Dying. For me, the struggle I had during all of those hearings was weighing up the respect for an individual's ability to make decisions respecting their autonomy and their capacity, versus the need for us to protect the vulnerable in our society with the understanding that the vulnerable in our society also have the ability to be autonomous and have the capacity to make decisions. That was the real struggle. How does my colleague view those two concepts? I would like to hear his views on the ability of an individual to make a decision that is best for themselves. We may not always agree with it, but how do we ultimately respect that?

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Hon. Ed Fast

May/17/23 5:53:13 p.m.
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Re: Bill C-314

Madam Speaker, that is a great question. Autonomy is critically important. The problem when we are dealing with the mentally ill is that autonomy is often much diminished. That is just one of the problems. What we hear back from stakeholders within the mental health profession is that issues of autonomy, capacity and suicidality have not been addressed appropriately through a national debate. We have not had that discussion, so there is no national consensus on this. Before we ever move forward with something as critical as a life-and-death policy decision like this, we should have that debate and have a national consensus.

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Mr. Gary Anandasangaree (Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Justice and Attorney General of Canada, Lib.)

May/17/23 5:54:05 p.m.
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Re: Bill C-7 Bill C-39 Bill C-314 Bill C-14

Madam Speaker, I thank the member for Abbotsford for bringing forward Bill C-314, an act to amend the Criminal Code regarding medical assistance in dying. I acknowledge that we are gathered on the traditional unceded lands of the Algonquin people. The bill before us proposes to indefinitely exclude persons whose sole underlying medical condition is a mental disorder from being eligible to receive medical assistance in dying, or MAID. I will be opposing the bill for reasons I will detail in my remarks. I want to start by providing a brief overview of MAID in Canada. MAID was legalized in 2016 for persons whose natural death is reasonably foreseeable, through former Bill C-14. Four years later, in 2021, former Bill C-7 expanded eligibility for receiving MAID to persons whose natural death is not reasonably foreseeable. Former Bill C-7 also temporarily excluded, until March 2023, eligibility for receiving MAID on the basis of a mental illness alone. Parliament decided that a temporary exclusion from eligibility for MAID where the sole underlying medical condition is a mental illness was necessary in recognition of the fact that such requests were complex and required additional study. This is why former Bill C-7 also required an independent expert review regarding recommended protocols, guidance and safeguards to apply to such requests. The expert panel on MAID and mental illness was created to undertake this review, and its final report was tabled in Parliament on May 13, 2022. Former Bill C-7 also required the establishment of a joint parliamentary committee to conduct a comprehensive review of the Criminal Code MAID provisions and other related issues, including MAID and mental illness. The Special Joint Committee on MAID, or AMAD, took this review and tabled its final report in Parliament on February 15, 2023. Our government extended the temporary exclusion to March 2024 through the enactment and coming into force of former Bill C-39. This was due to concerns about provincial and territorial readiness. It is important that we get this right. I want to take a moment to point out that the intention has always been for the mental health exclusion to be temporary. This is a complex, sensitive and polarizing issue. Some very legitimate concerns have been raised. However, I believe that the health care system will be ready for the safe provision of MAID where the sole underlying medical condition is a mental illness by March 2024. Significant progress has been made by our government, in collaboration with the provinces and territories and other stakeholders and experts, to prepare for this deadline. We are not ignoring the concerns that have been raised. In fact, many of these concerns led to the one-year extension of the exclusion. We are moving in a prudent, measured way with the ultimate goal of ensuring that our MAID framework supports the autonomy of those who are eligible to receive MAID and protects those who may be vulnerable. I will now turn to Bill C-314 and outline some of the technical issues. As I stated previously, the bill proposes to indefinitely exclude eligibility for MAID based on a mental disorder alone. It would do this by replacing “mental illness” with “mental disorder” in subsection 241.2(2.1) of the Criminal Code. There are two main issues with this approach. First, such a change may result in the unintended exclusion of persons with some medical conditions that are not currently excluded from eligibility for MAID. This is because “mental disorder” is a clinically defined term that practitioners have explained would likely capture all mental disorders included in the American Psychiatric Association's “Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders”, or DSM-5, whereas “mental illness”, as it relates to MAID, is meant to capture mental disorders that are primarily treated within the domain of psychiatry. “Mental illness” likely captures a smaller set of conditions than what would be captured by “mental disorder”. As such, making the switch in terminology without an accompanying definition may have the unintended consequence of excluding certain medical conditions that are not currently excluded from eligibility for MAID and that do not raise the same concerns as “mental illness” does in relation to MAID. The second issue is that the term “mental disorder” is already defined in section 2 of the Criminal Code as “a disease of the mind”, and there is extensive case law interpreting what this means in the context of the “not criminally responsible” regime. Therefore, a switch in terminology in the Criminal Code MAID provisions without an accompanying definition may unintentionally complicate legislative interpretation and may also result in the existing case law interpretation of “mental disorder” and the “not criminally responsible” regime context being applied to the MAID context. Although many experts and practitioners have noted a preference for the term “mental disorder” since it is a clinically defined term, this preference has already been expressed in the context of developing protocols, standards or guidance for MAID. It is important to remember that MAID is not just a health care issue. It is also a criminal law issue, and as I have just explained, things can get complicated in the legislative context given existing definitions and legal interpretations. Finally, I simply want to point out that Bill C‑314 also restructures the exclusion set out in the Criminal Code but does not seem to change its application. Currently, in order to be eligible for MAID, a person must have “a grievous and irremediable medical condition”, which is present when a person has a serious and incurable disease or disability, is in an advanced state of irreversible decline and is experiencing enduring and intolerable suffering, as per subsection 241.2(2). Right now, a mental disorder is not considered an illness, disease or disability under the first part of the definition of a grievous and irremediable medical condition. As such, a mental illness cannot satisfy the definition and therefore cannot be grounds for a request for MAID. Under the proposed new exclusion, a mental disorder would not be considered a grievous and irremediable medical condition at all. In other words, it would exclude mental disorders from the whole of the definition, even though some of those aspects may well exist in the case of a mental disorder, namely intolerable suffering and an advanced state of decline. Although this new exclusion would operate slightly differently than the existing exclusion, it seems as though its effects would be the same. I want to reiterate that Parliament considered this two years ago during its consideration of former Bill C-7 and decided that a MAID mental illness exclusion should be temporary. The point was reinforced by Parliament's enactment of former Bill C-39 this past March. The expert panel on MAID and mental illness has tabled its final report, which notes that the existing MAID eligibility criteria and safeguards, supported by other key resources, provide an adequate framework for the provision of MAID where the sole underlying medical condition is a mental illness. Parliament considered the issues again via the Special Joint Committee on MAID, and the majority of members agreed with the expert panel's findings. I urge members to join me in opposing the bill and not reverse Parliament's decision by unintentionally complicating legislative interpretation in the criminal law.

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Mr. Luc Thériault (Montcalm, BQ)

May/17/23 6:03:28 p.m.
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Re: Bill C-7 Bill C-314 Bill C-14

Madam Speaker, I heard the member for Abbotsford say right out of the gate that his bill seeks to reaffirm the dignity and worth of each and every human life. Who could be against that? The dignity of every human life, as I was trying to say to him earlier, depends on autonomy and respect for a person's self-determination. We may have good intentions, but if we claim to know what is good for a so-called vulnerable person because we think we know better than they do about what is good for them, because we mistake sympathy for compassion, if we decide through some sort of state or medical paternalism what is supposedly good for them, without considering the person's suffering at all, if we take away a person's self-determination, then we undermine their dignity. That is what I wanted to say, but my colleague did not understand. That is the very foundation of our position. It is called ethical and political philosophy, not theology or any sort of religious ideology. The preamble to the bill sets out its intentions: “Whereas Parliament considers it a priority to ensure that adequate supports are in place for the mental health of Canadians”. Who could be against that? I see no problem with that, but it has nothing to do with the purpose of the bill. This can be done without saying that the mental disorder considered as a serious and irremediable medical condition is excluded. I will come back to that. The second paragraph of the preamble states, “Whereas Parliament considers that vulnerable Canadians should receive suicide prevention counselling rather than access medical assistance in dying”. This really shows a lack of rigour. All the experts spoke about this and we can even read it in the literature. It is a little twisted to associate suicide with medical assistance in dying. I heard the leader of the opposition make that link a few times during oral question period, but conceptually that is false. Medical assistance in dying is initiated when an individual expresses that that is what they want. It is not imposed. Above all, it is for situations where the person's condition is irreversible. As far as I know, no witness at committee told us that a suicidal state is not reversible. Furthermore, witnesses also told us that we should not conflate the two. This is not getting off to a good start. When a request for medical assistance in dying cites a mental disorder as the reason, the first step is to establish whether the person suffering has been struggling with the mental disorder for 10, 20 or 30 years of their life. In the experts' report, which I hope my colleague has read, it says that a person exhibiting suicidal ideation would not be eligible. It is one thing to want or to request medical assistance in dying, and another to meet the eligibility criteria. This is essential. A person who is depressed or in crisis will not necessarily receive medical assistance in dying. Moreover, the experts say that an assessor would never consider a request for medical assistance in dying from a person in a state of crisis. The patient would have to first exhaust all available treatments for alleviating their suffering, without refusing a single treatment capable of restoring their health. As Dr. Black said, “One study estimated suicidal thinking as an 8% lifetime risk for adults in the Netherlands, yet 65 or 0.0004% of adults in the Netherlands have died of MAID in any given year due to psychiatric reasons.” Now we have members talking about a potential slippery slope, citing Bill C-14 and ignoring the obligation given to us by the courts to proceed with passing Bill C-7. Bill C‑14 was a bad bill that confused the public. Is it respectful of human dignity to force people to go on a hunger strike to reach the standard of likely and reasonably foreseeable natural death? I think there is something a bit inhumane about that. In order to reach a criterion that was unworkable for some, people had to actually go on a hunger strike. Others, like Ms. Gladu and Mr. Truchon, had to assert their rights in court. Members say they want to protect the vulnerable. They should start by not treating these people like children and not exploiting them for any purpose. They should instead think about their well-being. Who is more vulnerable than someone who is suffering intolerably and is close to their tolerance threshold? Who are we to decide for them what their tolerance threshold should be? That is essentially what this is all about. People want to live as long as possible. The court determined that these individuals' right to life was being infringed upon. I am sure the Conservatives have a lot to say about the right to life. The court found that by denying these individuals the right to medical assistance in dying, their ability to live as long as possible is being taken away. This prevents them from living until they reach their tolerance threshold. That is when we could provide care to them and proceed. Without this assurance, what do many of these individuals do? They commit suicide prematurely, and this infringes on their right to life. This is indisputable, and it could not be considered reasonable in a free and democratic society, even if it went to the Supreme Court. Some people always want to go to court. However, right now, people are suffering. While we are procrastinating, people are suffering. We have to put things into perspective. The committee that considered the issue of mental illness as the sole underlying medical condition made a recommendation. That is why I think that Bill C-314 is premature, at the very least, if not irrelevant at this time. I will read the committee's recommendation. It states, and I quote: “That, five months prior to the coming into force of eligibility for MAID where a mental disorder is the sole underlying medical condition, a Special Joint Committee on Medical Assistance in Dying be re-established by the House of Commons and the Senate in order to verify the degree of preparedness attained for a safe and adequate application of MAID (in MD-SUMC situations). Following this assessment, the Special Joint Committee will make its final recommendation to the House of Commons and the Senate.” At the very least, I would have expected a debate to take place following the work of that committee. That is the least that could have been done. I invite my colleague from Abbotsford to read the report of the Special Joint Committee on Medical Assistance in Dying and especially the expert panel's report. The recommendations set out in the expert panel's report include criteria and guidelines that do not exist for other forms of MAID practice. He should feel reassured after reading those recommendations, and I am sure he will never talk about a slippery slope again.

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