- Member of Parliament
- Member of Parliament
- Conservative
- Sherwood Park—Fort Saskatchewan
- Alberta
- Voting Attendance: 67%
- Expenses Last Quarter: $170,231.20
- Government Page
- Jan/30/24 10:27:08 a.m.
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Mr. Speaker, the next petition that I will table highlights the issue of euthanasia, or medical assistance in dying, and a particular proposal to extend this to children. In a context where we see continuous radical proposals for the expansion of an already deeply troubled system, petitioners are concerned about a proposal from one witness before a committee to expand euthanasia to include babies from birth to one year of age who come into the world with severe deformities and very serious syndromes.
Petitioners underline their view that infanticide is always wrong, and they call on the Government of Canada to block any attempt to legalize the killing of children in any situation for any reason.
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- Oct/5/23 10:24:00 a.m.
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Madam Speaker, the fourth and final petition I will table for today is from petitioners who are deeply concerned about proposals to legalize the killing of children under the rubric of so-called medical assistance in dying. The petitioners find these proposals deeply disturbing, and they call on the Government of Canada to block any attempt to allow the killing of children in Canada.
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- Sep/21/23 10:07:32 a.m.
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Mr. Speaker, the next petition is from those who are concerned about proposals to legalize euthanasia, or MAID, for children. The petitioners are asking the House to oppose any attempts to legalize the killing of children in Canada.
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- Sep/19/23 10:24:35 a.m.
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Mr. Speaker, the final petition that I am presenting today refers to comments made by Louis Roy from the Quebec College of Physicians recommending the expansion of euthanasia to “babies from birth to one year of age who come into the world with severe deformities and very serious syndromes”.
The petitioners believe that this proposal for the legalized killing of infants in Canada is deeply disturbing and wrong. They call on the Government of Canada to block any attempt to legalize the killing of children.
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- May/15/23 4:37:46 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, the final petition I want to table in the House—
An hon. member: Oh, oh!
Mr. Garnett Genuis: Mr. Speaker, I am actually going to table one more just to honour the member across the way, who I know appreciates this so much.
The second last petition I am going to be tabling raises concerns about proposals put forward for the euthanasia of infants. It notes that Louis Roy of the Collège des médecins du Québec recommended expanding euthanasia to “babies from birth to one year of age who come into the world with severe deformities and very serious syndromes”.
The petitioners are horrified by this proposal. They believe that infanticide is always wrong, that killing children is always wrong and that proposals for legalizing the killing of infants are deeply out of step with the recognition of universal human dignity that should define our criminal law. The petitioners therefore call on the Government of Canada to block any attempt to legalize the killing of children in Canada.
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- Apr/26/23 4:09:35 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, the next petition I will table today raises concerns from a number of my constituents about proposals for the legalization of euthanasia for children. We saw a committee report coming from the other three parties in the House calling for the expansion of euthanasia to include children.
The petitioners in this case particularly note a proposal for the legalization of euthanasia for babies, which is children from zero to a year old. The petitioners contend that infanticide is always wrong and are calling on the Government of Canada to block any attempts to allow the killing of children in Canada within our medical system.
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- Apr/19/23 3:57:30 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, the final petition I am tabling is from those who are strongly opposed to the legalization of child killing in Canada in the name of so-called medical assistance in dying. Petitioners are strongly opposed to proposals to legalize the killing of children by the medical system, and they call on the government to block any attempt to allow the killing of children in Canada.
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- Mar/30/23 10:21:05 a.m.
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Mr. Speaker, the next petition is surrounding proposals we have seen for the legalization of euthanasia for children in Canada.
Petitioners are opposed to euthanasia for children. They believe killing children is always wrong. They note that Louis Roy of the Quebec college of physicians recommended expanding euthanasia to “babies from birth to one year of age who come into the world with severe deformities and very serious syndromes”. Again, petitioners say that infanticide is always wrong.
The petitioning citizens and residents of Canada call on the government to block any attempt to legalize the killing of children.
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Madam Speaker, earlier the member from Winnipeg talked about how we all agree that it was wrong that a staffer at Veterans Affairs Canada was talking about euthanasia with a veteran who called looking for help. He asked if we do not all agree on that.
I think what confuses me about the government's position is that apparently it objects to the fact that over and over again, when a veteran called in for help at Veterans Affairs Canada, they were told to consider euthanasia or medical assistance in dying, yet if that same veteran had gone to see a psychiatrist or visited a nurse practitioner, the government would be totally fine with that person being given that advice. The government is fine with people being told by the medical system that they should consider or pursue this option, just apparently not when it comes from Veterans Affairs.
Does the member think there is an inconsistency in the government's position that we should be supporting people in all cases, regardless?
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Madam Speaker, the government has said that its approach is to try to eliminate from consideration those who are suicidal. In other words, those who are suicidal cannot have MAID, but those who are not suicidal can have MAID.
On the face of it, this does not make any sense, because by definition a person who is seeking suicide, facilitated through the medical system, is suicidal. The government is trying to make distinctions between concepts where no real distinctions exist.
The reality of the government's policy is that people who are experiencing suicidal thoughts and mental health challenges will be able to go to the medical system, and they will be facilitated in that by the medical system.
Would the member have a comment on the wordplay, the misrepresentation being used by the government to mask what is truly going to be the reality under its program?
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Madam Speaker, there was a proposal from the Quebec medical association to allow children to be euthanized. In particular, that proposal was for infants born with disabilities. It is horrifying to see that somebody, purportedly a doctor, would come before a parliamentary committee and actually advocate the killing of children on the basis of their having a disability, and that the same association would double down on it. If someone had told me 10 years ago that this would actually be happening in the Canadian Parliament, of all places, it is unbelievable just how far we have slid so quickly.
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Madam Speaker, I agree that we need to provide support to Canadians in all circumstances and that we need to do better to support Canadians living with disabilities. I would make one point in response to the member's question, which is that I believe human dignity is inherent. Dignity is not given by government; it is not given by circumstances. Dignity is inherent in the individual. It is incumbent upon us, at the core level, to recognize that inherent human dignity, that meaning that exists for all of us in spite of whatever challenging circumstances we may be experiencing, and for us as a society to treat people in a way that accords with and recognizes their inherent human dignity and allows them to live in ways that are fulfilling and meaningful in terms of their full potential.
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Madam Speaker, our party has a diversity of views on many aspects of the euthanasia regime in this country. At various stages along the way, there have been Conservatives who have expressed different points of views and voted different ways. My past interventions are well on the record, and I think they have actually been borne out by the experience of this.
When we first debated Bill C-14, I said there was a slippery slope here and the so-called restrictions were not going to work and were not going to remain in place. We have slid quite far down that slippery slope, so I can certainly defend the positions I have taken historically.
I think the diversity of views within our party is often a source of strength, but our caucus is united in saying that this expansion of euthanasia to those with mental health challenges is not acceptable and is not justified. It is something we are united in opposing.
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Madam Speaker, I have decided to share today for the first time the story of my young cousin Gabriel, who died by suicide on March 25, 2021. I hope his story provides some comfort to others and sharpens our understanding about the impact of the government’s proposal to legalize suicide for those with mental health challenges.
Gabriel was born here in Ontario, but spent most of his life in the United States. He had a loving and supportive family, which included three siblings, but he struggled throughout his life as a result of personal health circumstances that were generally hard to classify. He had Asperger’s syndrome and other things that affected the way he experienced the world. These health challenges made it difficult for him to form relationships with his peers and contributed to a sense of rejection and loneliness, but his family was always there for him, helping him work through the challenges and helping him to see his God-given dignity and purpose.
In conversations, my uncle has reflected on the contrast between Gabriel’s experience and that of his younger sister, Anastasia. Anastasia has Down syndrome. Society perceives her as having a disability. In fact, babies with Down syndrome face an extremely high abortion rate because our society fails to value people with Down syndrome, and also because it is poorly understood. Though perceived as having a visible disability, Anastasia is full of life, joy and happiness, which she effortlessly shares with all she encounters, especially those who are suffering. Gabriel, by contrast, did not look any different. He did not have an easily recognizable disability, but had immense pain that was largely invisible to the world around him.
I last saw Gabriel during a family road trip in 2019. At the time, he was working as an independent construction contractor and doing very well. However, as happened with many young small business owners, his business was hit hard by the circumstances of the COVID-19 pandemic, even though he himself was not at great risk from the virus. In March of 2020, a lot of North America and the world shut down as a result of fears about this novel coronavirus. People died from the virus, but many also lost livelihoods and communities, as well as opportunities to engage in meaningful work, so many died by suicide, in proportions that we will never know precisely.
The current government chose these unusual circumstances as the time to push forward its radical agenda of legalization of medically facilitated suicide for those facing mental health challenges. It brought its new euthanasia law into force on March 17, 2021. This bill made changes to the euthanasia regime in Canada that were universally decried by the disability community.
As it relates to mental health, the bill contained a mechanism by which the prohibition on legalized medically facilitated suicide would automatically expire two years later, on March 17, 2023. Thus, the government legalized suicide for those with mental health challenges, but delayed the coming into force of that legalization until this year. Meanwhile, my cousin died by suicide eight days after the passage of the legislation, on March 25, 2021, just shy of his 26th birthday.
These events were not connected. My cousin was not following Canadian politics at the time and would not have seen our deliberations as being relevant to him where he lived. Nonetheless, as I got the call from my father in the lobby of this very chamber, I thought about the many people like Gabriel who will be affected by our work, the many people like Gabriel who live with unseen pain, have highs and lows, and are deeply loved by family and friends.
Until now, the message we have all sought to deliver to people like Gabriel is that they are loved and valued and that their lives are worth living. It has been famously said, “He who has a why to live for can bear almost any how.” This insight was explored in depth by the great psychiatrist and concentration camp survivor Dr. Viktor Frankl. Frankl observed and reflected on the circumstances of his fellow prisoners and came to realize how important meaning is to human life.
Human beings are highly adaptable to circumstances, even when those circumstances involve extreme pain. Their ability to endure that pain hinges on their sense of meaning and purpose. I say it again, “He who has a why to live for can bear almost any how.” Frankl developed a psychological method called “logotherapy” out of this insight, meaning that, in a therapeutic context, helping people develop an understanding of their purpose and their meaning provides the critical ingredient for happiness, even happiness in spite of pain.
For someone suffering from physical or mental health challenges, there is the immediate treatment or therapy they receive, but there is also the larger social context that shapes their ability to see meaning and value in their life in the midst of suffering. I think colleagues here will identify with the fact that, when someone in our family is suffering from mental health challenges, we seek to help them reduce or eliminate their pain, but we also seek to show them that their life has value and meaning in the midst of that pain.
The problem is that we now live in a society that increasingly misidentifies the meaning of life as being the avoidance of pain. We follow Bentham in thinking that happiness is simply the maximization of pleasure over pain, instead of appreciating the historically much more common insight that happiness consists in the life well lived and the life lived in accordance with meaning and purpose.
Today, many people think that there is no point in living if one suffers, whereas in the past it would have been universally accepted that a person can live a good, meaningful and even happy life that includes a measure of suffering and pain. If we, as a people, come to define meaning and happiness as the avoidance of pain, then we contribute to a loss of hope for people like my cousin. He can live a good life if he is able to believe that his life has value and meaning in spite of his pain. However, if he is made to believe that the good life consists solely in the avoidance of pain, then he must endure both the pain of the moment and the loss of perceived purpose and value. The combination of pain with a loss of purpose is likely always a cross too heavy to bear.
My uncle told me that his message to Gabriel was always “We'll get through this; we'll figure this out.” Gabriel's family sought to push back against the idea that an early death was inevitable for someone like Gabriel, showing him that a good life was possible and that obstacles could be overcome.
However, when legislators endorse medically facilitated suicide for those who are grappling with questions of purpose and meaning in the midst of great pain and suffering, we send them the message that their life is not worth living and we undermine their pursuit of meaning in the midst of that suffering. When doctors or when employees at Veterans Affairs Canada put suicide on the table as a way out, then they sharply send the message to the sufferer that maybe their life is not worth living or that early death is inevitable because of what they're going through.
Today, I would like to send a different message. I would like to say to the Gabriels of the world that they are loved, they are valued and their suffering and pain do not rob them of their essential human dignity or their ability to live out a noble purpose in the world. I want to send that message because it is true, but also because it is therapeutically useful, so that all those who are looking for meaning in their life can know that such meaning can be found even in the midst of pain. Notwithstanding the government's position, I hope that my statement today does send that message.
I know that the government's response to this is to suggest that there is some sharp moral and legal line between suicide on one hand and MAID on the other, with MAID or “medical assistance in dying” being the uniquely Canadian and politically manufactured term for when a medical professional intentionally kills a patient. Is MAID for a person with mental health challenges the same thing as suicide? Of course it is. The only difference is that the actual pulling of the trigger is done by someone else. It is suicide with an accomplice. Is MAID available to the suicidal? Either MAID is for those who want it or it is for those who do not want it. Assuming that MAID is still supposed to be only for those who request it, and since the term “suicidal” literally means “desiring suicide”, then MAID is for, and only for, those who are suicidal, by definition.
The minister responsible for mental health recently told the House, “All of the assessors and providers of MAID are purposely trained to eliminate people who are suicidal.” Perhaps her use of the term “eliminate” was a Freudian slip, but if she means that those who are suicidal are not eligible for MAID, then who in the world is eligible for MAID? Is it the non-suicidal? It becomes evident, when one provides simple definitions for the words being used, that so-called MAID is the same as medically facilitated suicide, and therefore that the policy of the government is to have the medical system offer to facilitate the suicide of those who are experiencing suicidality as a result of mental health challenges. Such an offer fundamentally changes the message that those suffering will receive from society about the meaning and value of their lives.
Specifically, the House is today debating Bill C-39, a bill that would extend the coming into force of this heinous reality for another year. I support Bill C-39, because I will support any measure that further delays the coming into force of this horror. Conservatives believe that this should be delayed indefinitely. In the meantime, we will vote for the legislation in front of us. Who knows? Perhaps the extra year will mean an election and a chance to euthanize this grievous and irremediable proposal once and for all.
Finally, I know that many members of the government share my opposition to the proposal, at least privately. I spoke earlier about the work of Viktor Frankl. In his work on logotherapy, he outlined how moral distress can be detrimental to a person's mental health. He tells the story of one patient who experienced great moral distress because of things he was asked to do at his job. His psychiatrist had for years been working with him on a complicated regimen that involved the re-evaluation of events in his childhood. Frankl himself told his patient to just get a new job, which solved the problem entirely.
To those experiencing moral distress, they should not over-complicate a simple matter. They will lose their sense of self and their own sense of meaning in life if they sacrifice their moral judgment to a fanatical justice minister. Please stand for what is right. For the Gabriels of the world, there is too much at stake.
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- Jan/31/23 10:16:46 a.m.
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Mr. Speaker, the third petition I am tabling is similar to a petition tabled by a number of my colleagues. It relates to a proposal made by Louis Roy of the Collège des médecins du Québec recommending the expansion of euthanasia to “babies from birth to one year of age”.
This proposal from such an association is deeply disturbing to Canadians. Canadians generally recognize that killing children is always wrong, and the undersigned citizens and residents of Canada call on the Government of Canada to be clear in its opposition to this proposal and block any attempt to allow the legalized killing of children in this country.
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- Dec/13/22 12:00:05 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, the second petition I am tabling raises concerns about calls by Louis Roy of the Collège des médecins du Québec to legalize infanticide in certain cases. People who signed this petition were horrified that someone from that college would openly, before a parliamentary committee, call for legal changes that would allow the killing of children, the killing of innocents.
The petitioners say that infanticide is always wrong. They call on the Government of Canada to block any attempt to legalize the killing of children in Canada.
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- Dec/6/22 10:38:15 a.m.
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Madam Speaker, I have a number of petitions I want to present. The first is similar to that presented by my colleague.
The petitioners highlight, with horror, proposals from the Quebec college of physicians to legalize euthanasia for babies. They find this proposal deeply disturbing. Infants cannot consent. Killing children is always wrong. Infanticide is always wrong. There is no justification for proposing to legalize the killing of children.
The petitioners call on the Government of Canada to block any attempt to allow the killing of children for any reason.
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- Dec/5/22 3:23:50 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I have one petition to table today.
The petitioners are deeply concerned about a proposal from Louis Roy of the Collège des médecins du Québec, who recommended expanding euthanasia to “babies from birth to one year of age who come into the world with severe deformities and very serious syndromes”. This proposal for the legalized killing of infants is deeply disturbing to many Canadians.
The petitioners take the view that killing children is always wrong. They call on the Government of Canada to block any attempt to allow the killing of children.
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Mr. Speaker, it is a pleasure to rise today. I have a number of petitions to present to the House.
The first petition comes from Canadians living with disabilities who have a number of asks regarding policies within the ambit of the federal government and Parliament that relate to Canadians with disabilities.
The petitioners note that inflation has increased the cost of living and is having the greatest impact on Canadians with fixed incomes, including Canadians living with disabilities. They note disturbing reports of people accessing euthanasia in Canada due to a lack of access to care and support. They also note that Canada's leading disability advocacy organizations had warned that Bill C-7 would threaten the lives and security of Canadians living with disabilities and that a choice to access euthanasia can never be truly free if those who suffer do not have access to the support they require.
The petitioners urge the House of Commons to pass Bill C-22, ensuring that the new Canada disability benefit is accessible to all Canadians who live with disabilities and does not take away existing benefits. They also ask for us to repeal Bill C-7 so that Canadians who live with disabilities are not coerced into accepting euthanasia because they do not have access to adequate support.
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- Nov/30/22 4:09:40 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, the final petition that I am tabling in the House deals with the issue of conscience rights. It notes that the COVID-19 pandemic exposed serious gaps in support and services available to seniors and those who were dying. The forced closure of care homes and hospices which do not wish to participate in or facilitate the killing of their patients risks exacerbating the crisis in available long-term and palliative care.
The petitioners call on the Government of Canada to respect the charter-protected conscience rights of those who operate and work in care homes and hospices, ensuring that these facilities will be able to continue to operate.
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