Bill C-7 (Historical)

An Act to amend the Criminal Code (medical assistance in dying)

This enactment amends the Criminal Code to, among other things,
(a) repeal the provision that requires a person’s natural death be reasonably foreseeable in order for them to be eligible for medical assistance in dying;
(b) specify that persons whose sole underlying medical condition is a mental illness are not eligible for medical assistance in dying;
(c) create two sets of safeguards that must be respected before medical assistance in dying may be provided to a person, the application of which depends on whether the person’s natural death is reasonably foreseeable;
(d) permit medical assistance in dying to be provided to a person who has been found eligible to receive it, whose natural death is reasonably foreseeable and who has lost the capacity to consent before medical assistance in dying is provided, on the basis of a prior agreement they entered into with the medical practitioner or nurse practitioner; and
(e) permit medical assistance in dying to be provided to a person who has lost the capacity to consent to it as a result of the self-administration of a substance that was provided to them under the provisions governing medical assistance in dying in order to cause their own death.

Motion That Debate Be Not Further Adjourned

[David Lametti, Liberal, LaSalle—Émard—Verdun, QC]

Madam Speaker, I am satisfied that we are still respecting the process we put forward with Bill C-7 that had the general support of Canadians. We have always said that we would be dealing with the question of mental health in a profound way in the parliamentary review that was originally envisaged in 2016. We are still doing that.

We are now benefiting from the work the Senate has done. We will benefit from the work of the committee too. However, at the end of the day, I want to reassure the hon. member for Saanich—Gulf Islands that as parliamentarians, we will roll up our sleeves and work through the mental health criterion. That will bring us within the parameters of the Carter decision and will fulfill the right of all Canadians to have access to medical assistance in dying in a reasonable and safeguarded way.

[David Lametti, Liberal, LaSalle—Émard—Verdun, QC]

Madam Speaker, I assure the House and Canadians that nothing could be further from the truth. We consulted widely and deeply, beginning in January 2020, on this phase of the legislation, Bill C-7. We consulted over 300,000 Canadians online. We spread out across the country, from coast to coast to coast, to listen to Canadians who had experience with MAID and to listen to the disability community. Indeed, the very structure of Bill C-7 takes into account what we have heard from the disability community and builds in safeguards for the non-end-of-life scenario, representing the concerns we heard directly from them.

The leadership in the Senate from a senator who lives with a disability is, quite vigorously, evidence that we have indeed listened to and supported that community. With—

[Erin O'Toole, Conservative, Leader of the Opposition]

Mr. Speaker, the use of closure is quite unprecedented in Parliament, particularly on a topic as important as medical assistance in dying. In fact, the Minister of Justice, in question period today, said that this is a sensitive and important topic, yet he is limiting discussion of this important topic. There are literally hundreds of thousands of Canadians, those disability groups, indigenous leaders and mental health advocates, who have reasonable questions about this bill.

The minister knows the Senate substantively changed Bill C-7. Medical assistance in dying is no longer a standard of reasonably foreseeable death. It is no longer a standard of an irremediable condition. It is now going to include mental health conditions, even though there is the ability for people to get treatment and help, which is not the context first intended by Bill C-7 when the minister introduced it.

Just a month after Bell Let's Talk Day, when we talked about the need to talk when people are struggling, and when mental health advocates and thousands of Canadians have questions about this substantive change to how we address vulnerable people, people in the palliative stage of a disease and our publicly funded medical health system, why would the government limit reasonable questions of concern, particularly when it comes to mental health, and use closure in this way on Bill C-7?

[Catherine McKenna, Liberal, Minister of Infrastructure and Communities]

Mr. Speaker, in relation to the consideration of the Senate amendments to Bill C-7, an act to amend the Criminal Code on medical assistance in dying, I move:

That the debate be not further adjourned.

Business of the House

[Pablo Rodriguez, Liberal, Leader of the Government in the House of Commons]

Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague and friend for his question and for giving me an opportunity to talk about what we plan to do this week and once we return to the House.

This afternoon we will resume our study of the Senate's amendments to Bill C-7 regarding medical assistance in dying. Tomorrow we will resume debate on Bill C-24, which would increase the number of weeks of EI regular benefits and make international travellers ineligible for recovery benefits during their mandatory quarantine.

I would also like to inform the House that for the week of March 22, Monday, Tuesday and Thursday shall be allotted days.

Until then, I wish all of our colleagues an excellent week working in their ridings.

Employment Insurance Act

[Charlie Angus, NDP, Timmins—James Bay, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I listened with great interest to my hon. colleague. I do not want to challenge him but to correct the record for people listening.

It is not just that the government is pushing through Bill C-7; what it has allowed to happen here is for the unelected, unaccountable Senate to rewrite the law of Canada so that people with depression will be able to ask to die in two years, and this Liberal government is supporting that. This is ignoring what Parliament stands for.

Parliament does the hard work. If members of Parliament went back to their constituents and said that instead of having suicide prevention or mental health programs, they would like to make it easier for people with mental illness to die, there would be an outcry. There would be headlines and there would be debate. That would be democratic. It is the fact that this Liberal government is using the unelected and unaccountable Senate to fundamentally change a basic principle of the right to life in this country that I find appalling, and the fact the Liberals want to rush it through the House.

They say that we have obstructed; they are obstructing the democratic rights of this House.

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Parliamentary Secretary to the President of the Queen’s Privy Council for Canada and to the Leader of the Government in the House of Commons]

Mr. Speaker, the member is absolutely wrong. The Conservatives have become a destructive force, playing a destructive role inside the House of Commons in recent weeks and months. Let there be no doubt about that. Even some opposition parties have recently commented on the role the Conservatives have been playing. The only reason we are seeing what we have seen in the last 24 hours is that they have been shamed into doing some of the things that they are currently doing.

The member complained about Bill C-24. There are a number of pieces of legislation the Conservative Party has deliberately attempted to delay or prevent from passing. Bill C-7 is a good example. We attempted to extend the hours in that case.

The member talked about plenty of opportunities to provide due diligence. Will the member take responsibility for the irresponsible behaviour of the official opposition and recognize that it is time we start working together once again—

[Mark Strahl, Conservative, Chilliwack—Hope, BC]

Mr. Speaker, as always, it is a pleasure to speak in the House on behalf of my constituents. We are here today to discuss Bill C-24. Because of the government's failure to manage the House of Commons effectively, we are seeing its has created a crisis through its mismanagement. Once again we are up against a hard deadline, with benefits expiring for Canadians, and the government not managing the House calendar or its legislation so we can consider this fully. The bill before us today would expand the spending of the government by $12.1 billion. Because of how this is going to go, with members debating it for about six hours, that is about $2 billion an hour for every hour we will be able to discuss and review it here.

As has been said, this would fix a problem that is a result of the government's first attempt to provide benefits to Canadians, Bill C-2, which was rushed through the House at that time to meet a deadline the government knew about, but failed to plan for or to present legislation in a timely fashion to the House to address. That because the Prime Minister prorogued the House, shut everything down, eliminated all of the legislation that was on the Order Paper because of the WE Charity scandal. Things were getting a little too hot on that at the time, and it was time to shut down the investigations into the Prime Minister and his involvement in the WE Charity scandal, so he prorogued Parliament, which created this rush to get legislation before an October deadline when the CERB would end.

The bill was rushed through and Liberals did not realize that they had provided in that legislation a $1,000 bonus to people who had gone on leisure vacations outside of the country. People could apply and get $1,000 for the time they were at home during their 14-day quarantine after international travel. The bill passed, as has been said, because we needed to get the benefits to Canadians whose CERB was expiring, but there were no committee studies or debate in the House because of the government's mismanagement of this file. It saw a deadline, it did not care, and it rushed and made mistakes. That is indicative of the government's approach.

We are seeing it again today not only in this debate, but also in another important debate. I would argue that one of the most important debates the House will have in this Parliament is on Bill C-7 and the Senate amendments to it. That debate is being cut short because of the government's failure to plan or provide legislation and opportunities for parliamentarians to intervene on behalf of their constituents. We have a situation where, later this day, debate will be shut down on Bill C-7 and the Senate amendments, which call for the expansion of medical aid in dying to include people who only have mental illness or disabling conditions and who will now have access to medical aid in dying, something that has not been studied by this Parliament or in committee.

Because of the government's mismanagement and failure to respond in a timely fashion to court decisions and legislative deadlines, we now have a situation where yet another bill, in addition to this one, is jammed up against a deadline. The Liberals are forcing parliamentarians to address complex issues, in this case, life and death issues, with almost no time in the House because of their failures and mismanagement. People in my riding are very concerned about this. They are concerned about the government's inability to manage the House and debate on legislation in a way that addresses their concerns.

People have written to me about it, and there is one organization in particular from my riding that I want to highlight. The Chilliwack Society for Community Living signed an important letter from the Vulnerable Persons Standard, calling on members of Parliament to do better. It says, “Bill C-7 sets apart people with disabilities and disabling conditions as the only Canadians to be offered assistance in dying when they are not actually nearing death.... Bill C-7 is dangerous and discriminatory.... Canadians with disabilities are hearing MPs and Senators arguing that lives just like theirs featuring disabilities just like theirs are not livable. This is harmful and hurtful and stigmatizing.”

It goes on to say:

Take your time, start over, and get this right. As you do so, be careful to heed the advice of the UN Special Rapporteur on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities: "Listen closely to the most directly affected. Their antenna is highly attuned to ableism. When they see it, you should pause and reflect before proceeding."

Bill C-7 is not the answer.

This is another example, as is Bill C-24, of a government failing to take the time to allow Parliament to deliberate to get something right. If we had had the time to deliberate on Bill C-2, if the government had not shut down Parliament and rushed that up against the CERB deadline, I am sure that someone along the way, either in debate or as a witness at committee, would have identified this failure to focus the benefits where they were meant to be focused: on people who had to take sick leave because of COVID-19, not on those who needed to take a vacation. Had we had proper debate, that failure would have been identified.

Here again today, with just six hours of debate, it has to be rushed. After two hours, we are accused of being obstructionist and failing to do our job on behalf of Canadians. Only a Liberal government would think the solution to the problems it created by rushing a bill through Parliament previously could be solved by rushing another bill through Parliament again. That is the failure of the government.

What are we doing here? There is $12.1 billion to extend benefits to Canadians, which we have supported. All along we have supported the benefits going to Canadians who, through no fault of their own, have found their workplaces closed and their opportunities eliminated and have been forced into restrictive lockdowns. When governments force people out of their jobs and bring in conditions that restrict them from going to work, they have an obligation to provide them with an alternate income, but this cannot go on forever.

Here we are, and we are again extending it. The Conservatives support extending benefits to the people who need them, but what we also need is a plan to get past this, a plan to address the lockdowns, a plan to show Canadians there is hope for the future. That is why we have been calling on the Prime Minister to present that plan to Canadians. We have introduced a petition. The member for Calgary Nose Hill has called on the Prime Minister to use the tools we have gathered in the last year to help us get past this. We are calling on the Prime Minister to immediately present a clear plan to get Canadians safely out of lockdown. We are calling for it to include data-driven goals, a plan of action, and a timeline to achieve those goals and ensure the plan is articulated to Canadians so that they can have hope about when life and business will return to normal.

We know there have been some problems with vaccine procurement and rollout. We know there have been issues with conflicting advice being given to Canadians during this pandemic. Today we are a year into it; we have commemorated the lives that have been lost, but we also need to think about the lives that are being severely and permanently impacted right now. Some people are experiencing extreme mental health concerns. Others are not getting the health screening they need for cancer and heart disease. Other people are unable to join with others to worship freely, as is protected by the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

We need to plan forward so that we are not coming up against deadlines again and again, as the government has, to extend these benefits over and over again. We will be there when Canadians need us, but we also need to start talking about a plan and the way forward to ensure that these are not permanent benefits. The next benefit is to help our economy grow and help people get past these restrictions safely while listening to public health advice. We need a plan from the government, and we have not received it. All we have seen from the government is incompetence, mismanagement of the House, and mistakes being made time and time again. We need to do better.

[Garnett Genuis, Conservative, Sherwood Park—Fort Saskatchewan, AB]

Madam Speaker, I was very precise in saying that Conservatives had been prepared to work with the government on issues such as Bill C-18 and Bill C-24.

The member raises the issue of the government's desire to expedite legislation that would effectively undermine suicide prevention in this country. The government's new position on Bill C-7, which has been barely debated in the House and never studied in a House of Commons committee, would allow those whose primary health complaint is mental health related, who are dealing with depression or other mental health challenges, to be given suicide facilitation by the government.

That is a deadly serious issue. It is dead wrong, and it is strongly opposed by mental health advocates and disability rights organizations. I know that the member and many other members are receiving phone calls from constituents who have been blindsided by this rush to have state-facilitated suicide for the mentally ill. We will oppose that. That is dead wrong and—

Medical Assistance in Dying

[Arnold Viersen, Conservative, Peace River—Westlock, AB]

Madam Speaker, I have three petitions to present today.

The first petition is on the prime importance of human life and Bill C-7. The petitioners are calling for the current amendment to protect those suffering from mental illness to be supported. They call on the government to support these measures to protect human life and say that all human life should be respected. We should support Canadians who are most vulnerable and defenceless, not facilitate their deaths.

[Garnett Genuis, Conservative, Sherwood Park—Fort Saskatchewan, AB]

Madam Speaker, the second petition raises serious concerns about Bill C-7, including the government's plan to eliminate the 10-day reflection period. The petitioners are also concerned about the government's plan to allow suicide facilitation for those struggling with mental health challenges.

Notice of Closure Motion

[Bardish Chagger, Liberal, Minister of Diversity and Inclusion and Youth]

Madam Speaker, I unfortunately need to give notice that with respect to the consideration of the Senate amendments to Bill C-7, An Act to amend the Criminal Code (medical assistance in dying), at the next sitting of the House a minister of the Crown shall move, pursuant to Standing Order 57, that debate be not further adjourned.

Alleged Premature Disclosure of Contents of Bill C-22—Speaker's Ruling

[The Speaker, Anthony Rota]

I am now ready to rule on the question of privilege raised on February 19 by the member for Fundy Royal concerning the alleged premature disclosure of the contents of Bill C-22, An Act to amend the Criminal Code and the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act.

During his intervention, the member said that a CBC article posted online at 8:47 a.m. on February 18 described the details of Bill C-22 although it had not yet been submitted to the House. The member referred to the contents of the article, which he said discussed a number of the measures contained in the bill and boasted about the reliability of its sources. The Chair notes that the article had already been updated by the time the issue was raised. To be clear, with regard to this ruling, the Speaker considered the initial version of the article, which was published at the time of introduction and first reading of the bill.

After reviewing a series of precedents on the issue, the member said he also believed that the Minister of Justice's actions were contemptuous and that he had ignored the will of the House.

In response, the member for Kingston and the Islands informed the House that the office of the Minister of Justice had not shared the contents of the bill with the CBC journalist before its introduction. The member explained that he believed that the ministers' mandate letters sometimes allowed journalists to deduce the contents of bills on notice. After reviewing the contents of the article in question and comparing it with Bill C-22, the member argued that the article was sometimes inaccurate and even incomplete. In his opinion, the article was written by using a government source who was not familiar with the contents of the bill or by making conjectures based on previous policy statements. Finally, the member for Kingston and the Islands, basing himself on a ruling made on June 8, 2017, said that it is a prima facie case of privilege in such cases when the government admits that the leak occurred, but not when the government does not acknowledge a leak. In this case, the member stated that if the contents of the bill were disclosed prematurely, the government was not responsible.

As the member for Fundy Royal pointed out during his intervention, it is a recognized principle that the House must be the first to learn the details of new legislative measures. That is why both government bills and private members' bills are confidential from the moment they are put on notice until they are tabled in the House. Speaker Milliken's ruling of March 19, 2001, which the member for Fundy Royal mentioned, provides a good summary of the importance of respecting this rule:

The convention of the confidentiality of bills on notice is necessary, not only so that members themselves may be well informed, but also because of the pre-eminent rule which the House plays and must play in the legislative affairs of the nation.

That being said, when the Chair is called on to determine whether there is a prima facie case of privilege, it must take into consideration the extent to which a member was hampered in performing their parliamentary functions and whether the alleged facts are an offence against the dignity of Parliament.

In the case before us, an exhaustive review of the intervention by the member for Fundy Royal does not reveal exactly which aspects of Bill C-22 were supposedly shared with CBC for the article in question, nor did the member point out any similarities in language between the article and the bill to demonstrate that precise details of the bill were apparently disclosed to the media in a deliberate and premature fashion. The member for Kingston and the Islands pointed out inaccuracies in the article and differences from the bill.

When it is determined that there is a prima facie case of privilege, the usual work of the House is immediately set aside in order to debate the question of privilege and decide on the response. Given the serious consequences for proceedings, it is not enough to say that the breach of privilege or contempt may have occurred, nor to cite precedence in the matter while implying that the government is presumably in the habit of acting in this way. The allegations must be clear and convincing for the Chair.

As well, I believe it is important to mention that the distinction that the member for Kingston and the Islands wishes to make between questions of privilege that are a prima facie case of privilege and those that are not—simply because the government admits or does not admit that a leak has occurred—is not that clear. While there is indeed a well-established practice that a member must be taken at their word, the fact remains that the government's stating that it is not responsible for the premature disclosure of a bill is not in itself sufficient to convince the Chair. I would add that the source of the information is one factor among others and that it is important first and foremost to determine whether precise details were provided before the House was made aware of them. The Chair must thus take into consideration all the information before it and reach a conclusion based on the facts presented by the members.

The two precedents most like the current situation to which the two members referred are those that my immediate predecessor and I rendered with respect to Bill C-14 and Bill C-7 on medical assistance in dying. In these two cases, in light of the facts presented, it was clear that the information had been shared with the media before the bills were tabled in the House. In the case of Bill C-14, the Government offered no competing explanation. In the case of Bill C-7, it was clear that the anonymous source had spoken with the media despite the fact they were well acquainted with our customs and practices in the matter. That is not the case this time with Bill C-22.

Thus, in this case, in light of what has been presented, the Chair is not convinced that the question of privilege raised by the member for Fundy Royal is a prima facie case of privilege.

I thank the members for their attention.

Medical Assistance in Dying

[Garnett Genuis, Conservative, Sherwood Park—Fort Saskatchewan, AB]

Madam Speaker, my fifth and final petition raises significant concerns about Bill C-7. It objects to how the bill would remove a 10-day reflection period. The petitioners are also deeply concerned about the fact that the government is now trying, through a Senate amendment, to legalize suicide facilitation and euthanasia for those facing mental health challenges. I am sure they would want to highlight to the House that our focus should be on helping people with mental health challenges find recovery, not facilitate their death. I commend all five of these petitions to the consideration of all members.

Justice

[Kelly Block, Conservative, Carlton Trail—Eagle Creek, SK]

Mr. Speaker, citizens across Canada, including constituents in my riding, have been writing me to express their horror at the Senate amendments to Bill C-7. Canadians affected with mental illness want hope, not death. Why is the government opening the door for their untimely death rather than providing legal protection and hope?