- Member of Parliament
- Conservative
- Abbotsford
- British Columbia
- Voting Attendance: 66%
- Expenses Last Quarter: $146,571.88
- Government Page
- Feb/15/24 11:05:08 a.m.
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Madam Speaker, I am deeply disturbed that individual would actually promote assisted death for children. Let us not forget this. The suggestion is not only that this would be assisted death for mature minors. There is the suggestion that parents would not have the final say over whether their children would be euthanized. This is appalling. Is this the state of our country, where we have parties in the House of Commons actually promoting the deaths of children when in fact they can be helped and treated? We can do better as a country; I know we can.
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- Feb/15/24 10:52:56 a.m.
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Madam Speaker, it should have never come to this. Had the government properly consulted with Canadians, this expansion of MAID would never have seen the light of day. Instead, what we now have is MAID in Canada, a triumph of ideology over common sense.
The Liberal government's recent decision to further delay, but not cancel, the expansion of MAID to the mentally ill reflects an unserious approach to this all-important life-and-death issue. MAID was originally designed for those whose physical illness was incurable and caused intolerable pain, and where death was reasonably foreseeable. However, the Liberals soon eliminated the requirement that death be reasonably foreseeable and then went far beyond that by quickly agreeing to a demand from the unelected Senate to expand assisted suicide to include those suffering from mental illness.
The government has signalled a willingness to go even further by including children in its deadly scheme. As we predicted back in 2016, when the Prime Minister introduced medically assisted death to Canadians, our country is now hurtling down a steep and slippery slope. Despite the accusations of fearmongering and exaggerating that have been levelled at us, history has proven that Conservative MPs were right. Over eight short years, our country has moved from banning assisted suicide to having the most permissive and dangerous regime in the world. The statistics are staggering. Last year, over 13,000 Canadian deaths were attributable to MAID, a 31% increase over the year before. That is without MAID being made available for mental illness.
MAID is now the fourth leading cause of death in the country. When compared to other jurisdictions where MAID is available, like California, Canada's assisted suicide deaths far exceed those of other jurisdictions. That should really concern us, as it reflects a reckless implementation of MAID. Imagine how many more thousands of deaths will be added every single year, should the Liberal plan to include the mentally disordered come into force.
Of increasing concern are the growing number of cases in which MAID has been improperly approved and administered outside of what the criminal law currently allows. Here are just a few of them: There is a Hamilton man who would rather die than struggle with poverty, as reported in the Hamilton Spectator Reporter; the Cape Breton woman who sought MAID over lengthy workers' compensation delays; the Ontario quadriplegic mother who applied for MAID over a lack of access to disability supports; the former paralympian who told MPs that the veterans affairs department offered her assisted death instead of help; and the Winnipeg woman who chose to die through MAID because of her futile struggle for home care.
There is the case of Donna Duncan from my own city of Abbotsford, who was euthanized because mental health support was not available when she needed it the most. Indeed, she received MAID without her daughters, Christie and Alicia, knowing about it until after the fact. They had no chance to say goodbye to their mother.
Then there is Kathrin Mentler, who lives with chronic depression and suicidality. Feeling particularly vulnerable, she went to Vancouver General Hospital looking for psychiatric help for feelings of hopelessness she could not shake. Instead, a clinician told her there would be a long wait to see a psychiatrist and that the health care system is broken. That was followed by a jarring question: “Have you considered MAID?”
There is the case of Sophia, who suffered from severe sensitivity to smoke and chemicals, triggering rashes, difficulty breathing and blinding headaches. She died by MAID after a frantic effort by friends, supporters and even her doctors to get her safe and affordable housing in Toronto. She begged officials for assistance in finding a home away from the smoke and chemicals wafting through her apartment. “The government sees me as expendable trash, a complainer, useless and a pain in the ass,” she said in a video filmed eight days before her death.
Canadians are dying unnecessarily and under circumstances that scream out for reconsideration of how far Canadians are prepared to go in euthanizing their fellow citizens. It has become stunningly clear how little the government consulted on MAID expansion. Mental health professionals are only now becoming aware of the government's plans to euthanize persons suffering from mental disorders.
Psychiatrists, psychologists, clinical counsellors and suicide prevention experts overwhelmingly oppose this expansion, and only recently has the government begun to consult with indigenous communities, our fellow Canadians who are at the greatest risk from an expansive application of MAID.
The provinces and territories, as has already been mentioned, have sent a joint letter to the government, saying that they are not ready for MAID expansion. Indeed, they have called not just for a delay but for an indefinite suspension of the government's plans. Ordinary Canadians, of course, have repeatedly said they do not favour expanding assisted suicide to include the mentally ill.
What is worse is that this expansion is taking place at a time when Canada faces compounding national crises in mental health, palliative care, opioid addiction, affordability and homelessness. The skyrocketing cost of living has only exacerbated these profound social challenges.
The government's reckless approach to MAID also flies in the face of Parliament's stated commitment to suicide prevention, including the recently activated 988 suicide helpline, which is thanks to my colleague from Cariboo—Prince George.
How can members claim to support suicide prevention efforts, when at the same time they are promoting state-facilitated suicide? Clearly, the government's contradictory approach has been one in which blind ideology has trumped common sense and reason. More troubling is that the message to our most vulnerable Canadians, the mentally disordered, the opioid addicted, the homeless and hungry, and the veterans, is that their government would rather euthanize them than provide them with the mental health and social supports they need to live productive, meaningful lives.
The utilitarian implications of the government's approach are deeply disturbing and profoundly wrong on so many levels. By any other definition, expanding MAID to include the most vulnerable is nihilism hiding behind the fig leaf of compassion.
In a briefing recently, Liberal government officials indicated that they are still hell-bent on expanding MAID to the mentally ill. It is just that their masters, namely the Prime Minister and his Liberal colleagues across the floor, do not want to face the voters' wrath for placing their corrosive ideology above the interests and welfare of the most vulnerable among us. That is why they, the Liberals, have kicked the ball down the road to avoid the political consequences.
We can and should do better. What is really required and what Canadians are demanding of the Prime Minister and his justice minister is that they put a full stop to this madness now. There being no national consensus on MAID expansion, completely rescinding this policy is the only reasonable and responsible thing to do.
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- Oct/18/23 3:26:03 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, today, this House will vote on whether to protect the mentally ill against assisted suicide, but yesterday the justice minister falsely claimed that euthanizing vulnerable Canadians was good public policy and the only way to comply with Canadian law. Meanwhile, we are hearing more and more reports of Canadians crying out for help and being offered assisted suicide instead. Is this the sorry state of our mental health system? Millions of Canadians oppose the government's fascination with assisted death.
Will the government now bring a full stop to this madness?
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Mr. Speaker, once again, we hear reports of Canadians crying out for help with their mental health, but being offered assisted death instead.
The government refused to listen to mental health experts, to veterans, to disabled people and to indigenous Canadians. It did not listen to the family whose mother begged for help, but instead was euthanized before her kids could even say goodbye.
Canadians overwhelmingly oppose this overreach on assisted suicide. Tomorrow, we can end this madness by passing Bill C-314.
Will the government give Liberal MPs a free vote? This is for the whip, yes or no?
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- Mar/6/23 2:10:15 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, life is precious and is a beautiful gift. With that in mind, I stand here in support of Canada's most vulnerable. Eight years ago, we warned the Liberal government that its assisted death legislation would create a slippery slope that would put at risk the lives of many vulnerable Canadians. We were right.
The Prime Minister has engineered an unprecedented expansion of Canada’s assisted suicide regime by including mentally ill persons and signalling he wants to include children as well. There is absolutely no consensus among Canadians that we should do this. My bill, the mental health protection act, would repeal the government's decision to extend assisted death to mentally ill persons.
Instead of inexorably moving toward a culture of death, let us celebrate and nurture a culture of life. Let us provide these vulnerable Canadians with the social and mental health supports they need to enjoy meaningful and joy-filled lives.
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Madam Speaker, when I look at the plight of our veterans, I know many of them suffer from PTSD. Can anyone imagine a veteran walking into an office and asking for help? They say they need mental health supports and are asking for help. They are begging the government and the response is, “I am sorry. Why not consider medically assisted dying?” That is not acceptable.
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Madam Speaker, I am pleased to be able to join this debate.
The underlying legislation of Bill C-39 is very simple. The government is simply asking that it be given more time to introduce safeguards, guidelines and professional practices that would allow assisted deaths to be administered in such a way that mistakes are not made. However, we already know that mistakes are being made under the current regime, so that should not give Canadians any confidence. In fact, Bill C-7, which is the bill that has given rise to this request for an extension, is just another case of the Liberal government getting it so wrong by failing to consult in advance and then, after the fact, trying to fix all the mistakes and fill in all the gaps.
This is another story of failure, and what I would like to do is explain a bit of the context. Members may recall that back in 2015 the Supreme Court of Canada, for the first time, opened up the door to legalized assisted suicide, and the Liberal government then responded with Bill C-14, which restricted MAID, or medical assistance in dying, to those who were at the end of their lives and living in intolerable, grievous pain. We were assured this was not a slippery slope that was intended to include other vulnerable Canadians in Canada's assisted death regime. That is what we were told. Many of us did not take the government at its word. We did push back, but the government passed the legislation anyway.
Sure enough, here we are, some eight years down the road, and our fears were confirmed when the Quebec court, in the Truchon case, ruled that limiting MAID to those whose natural death was reasonably foreseeable was unconstitutional. The government did not appeal that case, a seminal case because it is opening up a life-and-death piece of legislation and expanding it without a reference to the Supreme Court of Canada. I believe that was an abdication of responsibility in itself. Instead, the government chose to accept the ruling and move forward with Bill C-7, which ended up extending MAID to include, among others, the mentally ill.
I want to be clear here. I do note that the original Bill C-7, which was introduced by the justice minister, did not include the mentally ill in Canada's assisted suicide regime. However, when that piece of legislation, Bill C-7, went to the Senate, the other place, the senators inserted a provision expanding and extending assisted suicide to the mentally ill in Canada. When it came back to this House, the government, instead of pushing back, the way one would expect a government to do, simply rolled over and said it would accept it the way it was, and that is now becoming the law of the land.
Bill C-7 also provided that the mentally ill provisions of Bill C-7 would come into force in two years. That is the sunset clause some people talk about. During that period of time, proper safeguards and practice standards were to be put in place to ensure that mistakes were not made. Not surprisingly, as it is a Liberal government, it got to the end of the two years, and virtually nothing has been done. The government actually struck an expert panel to review this, but it did not give that panel the right to review the merits of the underlying assisted suicide regime in Canada.
There is also a joint parliamentary committee between the Senate and the House that is still reviewing these provisions, and I am looking forward to that report. However, again, the mandate of the committee did not include any real, substantive review and investigation into the substance of medically assisted suicide. All it was allowed to do was tinker around the edges to implement a policy that has life-and-death implications for many Canadians.
Here we are. We have no safeguards and there are no guidelines for our practitioners, but we support the bill because we are trying to push this down the road as far we can. I will mention why in a moment.
The woefully inadequate rollout of the government's MAID regime is a manifestation of a Liberal government that appears to be in disarray and whose ideology is moving Canada from a culture of life to a culture of death rather than providing the necessary resources to our most vulnerable. Many in the House have raised that issue and have asked this: Why is it even necessary to apply assisted suicide to the marginalized in Canada, the vulnerable? They ask because right now we are not providing them with the resources and supports they need to live a satisfying and joy-filled life.
What is really of concern is that numerous stakeholders have said they oppose Bill C-7. By the way, there is no broad consensus in Canada that we move forward with assisted suicide for the mentally ill. There is some consensus for MAID to be in place for other cases where there is extreme pain involved, but Canadians do not support extending it to the mentally ill.
What is also of concern is that the government has now signalled that it will go beyond the mentally ill and would like to include mature minor children in this regime. The government is charging ahead with a life-and-death policy that has increased Canada's momentum down the slippery slope that we had warned of.
Is death now seen as a more cost-effective way of managing the most vulnerable in our society? Many have posited that this is the case now. Canadians have a right to question whether their government can be trusted on issues of life and death. If this is being extended to the mentally ill and to mature minors, what about the indigent? What about the homeless? What about the drug addicted? What about veterans? We know that veterans have already been counselled by the government to consider MAID as an option to serve their needs and provide them with support. We know that people who are arriving at the food banks are asking where they can access MAID, because they do not want to live in poverty anymore. That is a reflection on us as parliamentarians. It is a reflection on our country, and we can do better.
There is, however, some good news, and I will end with it.
I recently tabled a private member's bill in the House, Bill C-314, the mental health protection act. It would reverse the Liberal government's reckless acceptance of the unelected Senate's assisted death amendments. It would arrest the dangerous momentum that the expansion of medically assisted death has triggered on the slippery slope. Under my bill, Canadians whose sole underlying medical condition is a mental disorder would not qualify for MAID. At the same time, the preamble to my bill calls upon the government to finally deliver the mental health supports that have repeatedly been promised in federal budget after federal budget but have never been delivered. This is the least we owe to those who struggle with mental illnesses such as depression.
In closing, to ensure that we do not implement the mental health provisions of Bill C-7 before the House has an opportunity to revisit my piece of legislation, we on this side are very supportive of moving forward and passing the bill expeditiously. It will buy another year and push the whole issue of the mentally ill down the road, and we will make sure that we implement private member's legislation that actually protects the most vulnerable.
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- Dec/8/22 2:01:22 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, in 2016, the government legalized medical assistance in dying for adults who had an incurable illness that was irreversible and caused intolerable pain. Many of us warned that we were now on a slippery slope, which would lead to many others being offered assisted death. We were assured that assisted suicide would never be expanded, yet a short six years later, it is being offered to those who give mental illness as their sole reason for ending their lives, and there are plans to extend this scheme to minor children.
Now we are hearing terrible stories of veterans being encouraged to end their lives rather than receive the mental health supports they need. Assisted suicide is even being approved for those who cannot find adequate housing or have fallen through the cracks of our social support system. The government has moved too fast and too far. Life is a beautiful gift.
Before we move from a culture of life to a culture of death, let us reconsider the precarious path we are on and pause any further expansion of assisted death.
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