Contact Members of Parliament and Senators concerning Bill C-14.

Alex Schadenberg

Executive Director - Euthanasia Prevention Coalition

The two votes on May 4 in the House of Commons on the euthanasia Bill C-14, one to close debate and one to send the bill to committee do not change anything. 

The 235 to 75 vote to send Bill C-14 to committee was disappointing, but only procedural. The 165 to 140 vote to close debate on Bill C-14 was undemocratic but not surprising considering the Supreme Court imposition of June 6 to pass legislation on euthanasia and assisted suicide.

EPC is impressed by Robert Falcon Ouellette (Liberal MP - Winnipeg Centre) who has strongly opposed Bill C-14 (Link to his CBC interview with Ouellette).

The fact is, achieving political movement requires all of our supporters to send letters to Members of Parliament and Senators. We also ask you to attend our rally on Wednesday June 1 on parliament hill (12 noon to 1:30 pm).

EPC urges you, to write to Canadian Senators, especially the members of the Senate Committee on Legal and Constitutional Affairs with your concerns about Bill C-14.

EPC also urges you to contact the members of parliament on the House of Commons Committee on Justice and Human Rights, with your concerns about Bill C-14.

Resources for your communicating with committee members:
Link to the article on Bill C-14 by Alex Schadenberg.
Link to the article on Bill C-14 by the Physicians Alliance Against Euthanasia.
Link to the article on Bill C-14 by Dr Will Johnston (EPC - BC).
Link to the article on Bill C-14 by Andrew Coyne.
Link to the article on Bill C-14 by Amy Hasbrouck (Toujours Vivant - Not Dead Yet).
Speech in parliament by Liberal MP Robert Falcon Ouellette opposing Bill C-14.

EPC presented before the House of Commons Committee on Justice and Human Rights and we will be presenting to the Senate Committee on Legal and Constitutional Affairs.

We need you to write to the members of these committees.

EPC: Write to Senators and Members of Parliament.

The Senate Standing Committee on Legal and Constitutional Affairs will be hearing interventions concerning Bill C-14, the bill that will legalize and “regulate” euthanasia and assisted suicide in Canada.

Last week, EPC urged you to contact the members of parliament on the House of Commons Committee on Justice and Human Rights, who hearing from groups and individuals from across Canada on Bill C-14

EPC needs you, to contact Canadian Senators, especially the members of the Senate Committee on Legal and Constitutional Affairs with your concerns about Bill C-14.

The Euthanasia Prevention Coalition (EPC) presented to the House of Commons Committee on Justice and Human Rights this week and next week we will be presenting before the Senate Legal and Constitutional Affairs committee. The Senate has the ability to amend or defeat Bill C-14. 

The Euthanasia Prevention Coalition is also organizing a rally on Parliament Hill on Wednesday June 1 from 12 noon to 1:30 pm.

Resources for your communicating with committee members:
Link to the article on Bill C-14 by Alex Schadenberg.
Link to the article on Bill C-14 by the Physicians Alliance Against Euthanasia.
Link to the article on Bill C-14 by Dr Will Johnston (EPC - BC).
Link to the article on Bill C-14 by Andrew Coyne.
Link to the article on Bill C-14 by Amy Hasbrouck (Toujours Vivant - Not Dead Yet).

Speech in parliament by Liberal MP Robert Falcon Ouellette opposing Bill C-14.

Contact information - Senate Committee on Legal and Constitutional Affairs members:

Committee Chair: Senator Bob Runciman (CPC) bob.runciman@sen.parl.gc.ca

Deputy Chair: Senator Mobina Jaffer (Lib) mobina.jaffer@sen.parl.gc.ca

Committee Member: Senator George Baker (Lib) george.baker@sen.parl.gc.ca

Committee Member: Senator Denise Batters (CPC) denise.batters@sen.parl.gc.ca

Committee Member: Senator Pierre-Hugues Boisvenu (IND) boisvp@sen.parl.gc.ca

Committee Member: Senator James Cowan (Lib) jim.cowan@sen.parl.gc.ca

Committee Member: Senator Nicole Eaton (CPC) nicole.eaton@sen.parl.gc.ca

Committee Member: Senator Serge Joyal (Lib) serge.joyal@sen.parl.gc.ca

Committee Member: Senator Thomas Johnson McInnis (CPC) thomasjohnson.mcinnis@sen.parl.gc.ca

Committee Member: Senator Paul McIntyre (CPC) paul.mcintyre@sen.parl.gc.ca

Committee Member: Senator Donald Plett (CPC) don.plett@sen.parl.gc.ca

Committee Member: Senator Vernon White (CPC) senatorwhite@sen.parl.gc.ca

EPC urges you to send letters to Members of Parliament and Senators. Link to contact Members of Parliament. Link to contact Senators.

Letters to Members of Parliament and Senators can be mailed (Postage Free) when using the following address:

(Name) Member of Parliament
House of Commons
Ottawa Ontario K1A 0A6

Senator (Name)

Senate of Canada

Ottawa Ontario K1A 0A4

Robert Falcon Ouellette, suicide / assisted suicide, speech in parliament

The following is the speech delivered by Robert Falcon Ouellette MP (Winnipeg Centre Lib) at 6:30 pm on Monday May 2, 2016, as reported by Hansard.

Robert Falcon Ouellette MP (Winnipeg Centre Lib)

Madam Speaker, a report in The Globe and Mail on April 24, 2016, says 13-year-old Sheridan Hookimaw killed herself on the banks of the river that winds through Attawapiskat. The sickly girl had been flown out for weekly medical appointments. She wanted to end her pain, and in the process, she set off a chain reaction not only in her community but in communities right across this country, which we are still dealing with today.

This debate strikes at the very heart of the meaning of life, it strikes at the heart of bureaucracy, and it strikes at the heart of how we care for the most vulnerable in our society. I have been told over and over again that this situation is different, that there is no connection.

In the indigenous world view, everything is interconnected. It is holistic, meaning that when a change is made in one place, the impact will be felt elsewhere, and the two cannot be separated. In the western world view, often we compartmentalize things. We believe that we can play, that we can control certain situations, that we can effect change here and not see change in other places. Above all, we have come to believe ourselves able to predict and control all, to control the future. This does not mean, though, that we should not take action.

The impact of this bill on people in Toronto may be very different than on the people in Nunavik or Attawapiskat. Our role as parliamentarians is to place ourselves in the moccasins of others, to place ourselves outside of our own experiences, to see the world through another cosmology and other world view, and to see the impact that our decisions may have on others.

We are making profound changes in concepts surrounding life, which cannot be undone in the future. In the indigenous tradition and philosophy, we are required to think seven generations into the future. If I am wrong and there is no connection between Attawapiskat and physician-assisted dying or suicide, if the average person does not see a connection and communities do not see a greater stress, then I will gladly say I was wrong; but if there is an impact, which is caused by the valorization of suicide, then what?

When the House passed amendments to the Criminal Code on other issues in our criminal justice system, who would have thought that indigenous peoples would now make up 23.2% of the prison population? It seems that madam justice is blind to the suffering of many of her fellow citizens. We have equal laws, and yet the treatment and effects are unequal across our country. We make laws often for the average person, but the impact is felt most by those who are on the margins of society.

Even though we have the Gladue rulings in our justice system and cases where we are supposed to take into consideration someone's upbringing, someone's past, unfortunately, those are not reflected in our justice system. Therefore, how can we be assured that the changes we are making today in the House will not have an equally detrimental impact on others?

My earliest memory, one of my strongest memories, is as a little six-year-old boy. My mother had just lost a house. We were in tough economic times in Calgary, Alberta, and she could no longer support us. She was a single mom, and she went off on the road looking for work. She decided at one point she could no longer raise me or my little brother by herself and she needed help, so she went to her ex-husband, my father. My father was a residential school survivor, an alcoholic, and a member of gangs. We knew all these things.

We knew he had a terrible temper. We were told this as young children, and we were very scared as children. We were dropped off at his place, with his parents, my grandmother and grandfather, and we were very upset. It is the only time that I remember my brother peeing his bed, because of the stress, because my mother had to find work because of economic stresses in her life.

I remember climbing a tree in the back yard and wrapping a rope around my neck at the age of six. This is a true story. People often think it cannot be true, but this happens in our country, like the case of the 13-year-old girl in Attawapiskat.

I wrapped that rope around my neck and thought, “Should I jump off into this universe, which is before me?” It was in that back yard that somehow I made the decision to climb down out of that tree and unwind that rope from around my neck.

If in my life I had seen, or I had known, that my grandmother had somehow used physician-assisted dying or physician-assisted suicide, or others in my family had completed the irreparable act, then it would have made it much more difficult for me to continue.

We might not think the impact will be there, but we do not know. We assume we know these things. We are deciding the future of a few for the end of a few.

In the case of Sheridan Hookimaw, as a society, we are unable to provide the necessary care, the love and the protection. We have failed our most vulnerable.

The Canadian Webbian bureaucracy was unable to respond to the needs of a 13-year-old girl. How can we be sure that it will now be able to respond to the needs of all in the future in our societies?

This debate is about life itself. Indigenous people never knew of suicide. It was unheard of in indigenous communities. Yet it now continues to plague our communities, and the spirit of suicide seems to always be there.

Life is not easy. It is about struggle, about fighting for another day. If indigenous peoples had committed suicide, then we would not be here today for all the trials and tribulations we have faced.

I participate in one of the high ceremonies of the indigenous custom and tradition of the Plains Cree. It is called the sundance. It is a four-day ceremony, and for three days and three nights, no food or water shall pass my lips. I pierce my body to sacrifice myself for others, in prayer for them. I do this not for myself, not to ask for something for myself, but for others.

In the sundance, in the sundance lodge, my Sundance Chief David Blacksmith talks about the spirit of suicide, how it is coming to take our young and is starting to take our old people, how it is affecting our society, how it is destroying our sense of community, and I have to listen to it. I have to be moved by the words he brings, because the people surrounding me in the sundance have all been affected by it.

We are placing ourselves now outside of nature. Nature itself is hard, to strive, to struggle, to see another day. It is a struggle that is noble. Now placing the tasks in the hands of the state removes us from nature, telling the state that it will now be the one who will be enabling us to do these things; someone else will be deciding, bureaucracy will now be deciding.

Others may feel that they are a burden. Others may say that they are a burden. I think there is something noble in sacrifice and in striving in the struggle for life itself, to hold someone's hands in the final moment, to have to grow up and not simply say, “I am going to hand it off to someone else to look after, but that I will stand there or I will sit there, holding your hand at that exact moment. Even in your final breaths, even though it may be difficult, we will continue on”.

Perhaps this is just another step on the road of moral relativism that we are in nowadays, but even our judiciary cannot serve as a balance between the different societies making up Canada. We are in a sorry state. We have truly entered a new age, one of the throwaway culture where all boundaries are starting to crumble.

Finally I would like to say, in the words of Elder Winston Wuttunee, “If you cry, your children will die”. It is dangerous to abandon one's self to the luxury of grief. It deprives one of courage and even of the wish for recovery.

From an indigenous perspective, I look at this bill and I cannot support it, because it leads to a place where I do not believe we are looking out for the interests of all people within our society. It is not allowing us to fully comprehend the needs of everyone who makes up Canadian societies, but really, it is taking us down a path that is very dangerous, and we do not know where it ends.

Let us be very careful in this House, and take the time that is necessary as we make our decisions.

Robert Falcon Ouellette then responded to a challenge by a Member of Parliament who argued that Ouellette's comparison of assisted suicide to the suicide deaths in Attawapiskat was inappropriate. Hansard reported Ouellette as responding:

Madam Speaker, unfortunately, perhaps the member fails to understand indigenous philosophy, which is about the interconnectedness of everything. The member may believe that these are unconnected events, but in fact they are connected. We could debate about the definition of the bill. We could say “medically assisted dying” or “medically assisted suicide”. Our use of terminology is very important. If we use “medically assisted suicide”, it has connotations to it that people will understand. I am sure at some point that people will be banging on the doors at some emergency wards and saying they are suffering, they want to end it, and ask for help.

I apologize if I offended anyone in invoking the name of the young girl, but her name is in the newspapers and her case is well known. If we cannot speak truth in this place and use the truths that are out in society here in the House of Commons then where else will it happen?

Native leaders oppose euthanasia and assisted suicide.

Francois Paulette

Alex Schadenberg
Executive Director - Euthanasia Prevention Coalition

The chair of Yellowknife's Stanton Territorial Health Authority Elders' Advisory Council, Francois Paulette told CBC news that: 

Indigenous people are bound by spiritual law, not man-made law.

Robert Falcon Ouellette

Last week Jorge Barrera from APTN News reported that Robert Falcon Ouellette, the Liberal MP from Winnipeg Centre, said that he will vote against Bill C-14 the bill that will legalize euthanasia and assisted suicide. 

According to the APTN report:

Ouellette said the federal government should work around the deadline and delay legalizing assisted death for at least five to 10 years until it’s absolutely clear what sort of impact it would have in all corners of Canadian society. 

“I think we need to take more time, especially in light of Attawapiskat,” 

“I think there are communities that have this issue and if you allow, all of a sudden, this to occur…it might be very difficult,”

“I am afraid if we open this little door right now we won’t be able to fight that suicide spirit.”

Dr Alika Lafontaine

CBC reporter, Sonja Koenig reported that Canada's Indigenous community is concerned about legislation that legalizes euthanasia and assisted suicide. Bill C-14 was introduced in the House of Commons on April 14. 

According to the Koenig report Indigenous leaders have not been consulted. Dr. Alika Lafontaine, the president of the Indigenous Physicians Association said, 

so far, there's been no meaningful consultation with Indigenous groups.  

Lafontaine says even though the new legislation has been tabled, it isn't too late. 

"Even if these regulations are written up, there is still an opportunity to create our own in-house solutions when it comes to medically-assisted dying in our communities." 

Paulette spoke to the issue at a Dene leadership meeting today in Yellowknife.

Canada's Indigenous communities need to organize in opposition to assisted dying before Bill C-14 becomes law.

Liberal MP Robert-Falcon Ouellette will vote against euthanasia bill C-14

Alex Schadenberg
Executive Director - Euthanasia Prevention Coalition

Robert Falcon Ouellette (Liberal MP)

Jorge Barrera from APTN News reported that Robert Falcon Ouellette, the Liberal MP representing Winnipeg Centre, said that he will be voting against Bill C-14 the bill that will legalize euthanasia and assisted suicide. 

According to the APTN report:

Ouellette said the federal government should work around the deadline and delay legalizing assisted death for at least five to 10 years until it’s absolutely clear what sort of impact it would have in all corners of Canadian society. 

“I think we need to take more time, especially in light of Attawapiskat,”

Attawapiskat is a Cree community in the James Bay region that is experiencing a suicide crisis. Ouellette stated to APTN:

“I think there are communities that have this issue and if you allow, all of a sudden, this to occur…it might be very difficult,” 

“If grandma, grandfather decides they had enough in life…if they weren’t able to carry on, why should I carry on? If they weren’t strong enough, why should I be strong enough? 

I think that is a question that is asked in Attawapiskat more often than not and the ripple effect of assisted dying is not the same in Toronto as in other places.”

Ouellette explained that his position on the issue was influenced by a conversation he had with his Sundance chief about three years ago.

“We were talking about suicide and he was talking in the lodge about this and he said, ‘Never forget the spirit of suicide, you have to fight the spirit of suicide, make sure it doesn’t come into our lives,’” 

“I am afraid if we open this little door right now we won’t be able to fight that suicide spirit.”

The Liberal government should use the Notwithstanding clause to give them more time, as Ouellette has said is necessary. The Notwithstanding clause would give the  government at least 5 years to determine how to handle this issue.

[1] Section 33 of the Canadian Constitution’s Charter of Rights and Freedoms, also known as the “notwithstanding clause,” is a legislative power that allows the Parliament or a Legislature to override certain Charter section.

A Letter From Australia to Canadian MP Robert-Falcon Ouellette

I was pleased to see you questioning the impact of legalizing assisted suicide and euthanasia on Canada's Indigenous people.

Robert Falcon-Ouellette MP

As Canada considers legislation to change the law on murder and assisted suicide to allow certain people to be killed with legal immunity it may be helpful to consider the fate of the world's first modern euthanasia law.

In 1996 the Australian Parliament overturned the Northern Territory's euthanasia law. This followed an extensive Senate committee inquiry in which one of the key issues canvassed was the deep opposition to the idea that a doctor could give a lethal injection from the indigenous community and its leaders. Chapter 5 of the committee's report detailed concerns that indigenous health, already seriously below par with that of other Australians, would be further set back as indigenous people were afraid and unwilling to go to a hospital where one of the "treatments" on offer was a lethal jab.

Attempts to revive the Northern Territory euthanasia legislation have been opposed for the same reason.

Richard Egan
Western Australia, Australia

Liberal MP, Robert-Falcon Ouellette questions euthanasia.

Alex Schadenberg
Executive Director - Euthanasia Prevention Coalition

Robert-Falcon Ouellette MP Winnipeg Centre

CBC News, Kristy Hoffman, reported that Robert-Falcon Ouellette, the Liberal MP from Winnipeg Centre, is questioning whether to support Bill C-14, the bill that would legalize euthanasia and assisted suicide. Ouellette told CBC news:

"Once we make a decision on this, there will be no going back,"

Ouellette continued:

"I'm concerned that we haven't thought out the complete ramifications that a decision like this might have on indigenous communities that seem to be suffering greatly," 

"This will be a right that will become entrenched and the impacts on vulnerable groups will become entrenched and it's very hard to stop."

Ouellette has not decided how he will vote on Bill C-14. He said:

"When I go to my Sun Dance ceremonies, when I go to meet with the elders and we are in our lodges, I have my Sun Dance Chief, David Blacksmith, who said, 'We must fight the spirit of suicide. We must work each and every day to defeat it.' That, to me, is important." 

Studying different people who could access doctor-assisted dying is the next step. 

"I don't think we've consulted with everyone and the impacts this might have."

Help Ouellette with his consultation by sending letters to:

Robert-Falcon Ouellette MP 

House of Commons

Ottawa ON  K1A 0A6