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Charlie Angus

Member of Parliament
NDP

Timmins—James Bay
Ontario
Voting Attendance: 63%
Expenses Last Quarter: $134,227.44

Government Page

Context: House Hansard - 283 - Feb/15/24

Mr. Charlie Angus (Timmins—James Bay, NDP)

Feb/15/24 11:05:58 a.m.
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Madam Speaker, I think my colleague shares my concern that we are now 30-some days away from an arbitrary deadline that was imposed. We passed a national palliative care motion that I brought in 2016, and nothing was done. In 2019, we brought forward the national suicide prevention strategy that was based on the work in Nunavut. Everybody signed off, and nothing was done. Now we are being told that we should be making it easier for people who are suffering with mental illness, people who are on the streets, people using opioids, people who are hopeless, and that we should be fast-tracking that rather than putting in place the protections needed to protect people. What are my hon. colleague's thoughts are on that?

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Context: House Hansard - 159 - Feb/13/23

Mr. Charlie Angus

Feb/13/23 7:35:37 p.m.
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Re: Bill C-39

Mr. Speaker, I want to say that the whole plan we had developed as New Democrats, the national suicide prevention plan, came out of the groundbreaking work in Nunavut because of the understanding that statistics were important. Documentation and identifying the factors were key to being able to go in and bring down those numbers. We can dramatically decrease those kinds of deaths when we have actual facts. That is what we have found, and I share my colleague's concern. We know that people from our region who end up in the city do not have the family supports. There is fundamental racism, and it has to be said, in the medical system. There are people who are coming in who are in distress, people who may be homeless, and they are not with their families and their loved ones. It concerns me that these decisions would be made without trying to find out where the family is. Where is the support? If we do not have that, people will be using this, because they do not know what else to do when they are in distress. These are factors that have to be looked at, because vulnerable populations will be susceptible to this, and we have to find ways to support them. If they have the love and the support and they can get housing, in the vast majority of cases, they are going to be able to live much better lives.

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Context: House Hansard - 159 - Feb/13/23

Mr. Charlie Angus (Timmins—James Bay, NDP)

Feb/13/23 6:19:03 p.m.
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Re: Bill C-39

Madam Speaker, in May 2019, every member of Parliament stood up and supported my motion, Motion No. 174, to establish a national suicide prevention action plan. There were a number of key steps that the government and members of all parties agreed to, including establishing national standards for training people involved in suicide prevention and making sure we were working with first nation, Métis and Inuit communities on establishing norms and proper funding, as well as the obligation to report to Parliament annually on preparations for and the implementation of the national action plan, including data. That never happened. The government voted for it, and nothing happened. Yet, when the unelected, unaccountable Senate decided to throw in, at the last minute, a provision that would allow mental illness to be the sole reason to judge whether someone should be allowed to die or not, that was accepted without even a challenge, and now the government is scrambling at the last minute to prevent it from becoming law. I would like to ask my hon. colleague about the lost opportunities the government has had to lay a proper course for the protection of people to make sure that we are doing things in a humane way and not having to act in such an ad hoc, eleventh-hour response to a very badly thought-out provision thrown in by the unelected, non-accountable Senate.

235 words

Context: House Hansard - 159 - Feb/13/23

Mr. Charlie Angus (Timmins—James Bay, NDP)

Feb/13/23 3:53:26 p.m.
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Re: Bill C-39

Madam Speaker, I was very surprised listening to my colleague talking about the numbers they have. In 2016 there were 1,200 cases of MAID. That doubled in 2017 and doubled again in 2018. It was over 10,000 in 2021. That is nearly 30 people dying in this country every single day. That is more than double all the deaths from breast cancer or all the suicides in this country. We were promised a process to make sure we were not implementing a regime that was doing this without really strong checks and balances. I find it staggering that the member could say this thing is working when we see such massive increases, much higher than in Europe or anywhere else, in medically assisted death in this country.

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Member of Parliament

Charlie Angus