JT to Whip Assisted Suicide Vote

[scribblet]

Someone who would seriously argue that the Liberals are going to "off vulnerable people" is not someone you can have a rational conversation with.

Sure, if someone actually said that, which is different from arguing that the Liberals are going to allow vulnerable people to be offed, preferably by a physician.

[Big Guy]

Perhaps it is time to allow our pharmaceutical industry to develop a "end of life" pill. Something guaranteed to be painlessly lethal, easily administered and available by prescription only.

The reason most of serious suicide by chemicals attempts are not successful is because they unsuccessfully try to create their own cocktails.

[scribblet]

Sure, why not then they can be sold in the 'euthanasia boutiques'. Would the prescription require only one doctor's signature or a panel of doctors?

Would you sell them to 'mature minors'

http://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/doctor-assisted-death-minors-1.3466769

[Big Guy]

Sure, why not then they can be sold in the 'euthanasia boutiques'. Would the prescription require only one doctor's signature or a panel of doctors?

Would you sell them to 'mature minors'

http://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/doctor-assisted-death-minors-1.3466769

Thank you for the question. Personally, I would make it available to anyone with a doctors prescription.

I do understand and appreciate that different people have different visions of how Canada should be organized. Personally, I believe that individuals should be able to make their own decisions about themselves and their health. I do not believe that government is there to protect people from themselves. There are people currently in a deep coma due to a botched suicide attempt and costing the rest of us $millions because they did not have access to a guaranteed method ending their lives.

I have been around for a while and have seen some of my friends ending the pain that life had become. Most suicides are currently not identified as such for a variety of reasons from insurance coverage to the family not wanting the "stigma" of having a suicide in their midst.

Most people have been fortunate enough to never have been in such physical and/emotional pain that consciousness becomes an enemy and are reluctant to accept the fact that someone can be rational, sane and wanting to end their lives.

[Smallc]

Sure, if someone actually said that, which is different from arguing that the Liberals are going to allow vulnerable people to be offed, preferably by a physician.

You're still trying to insinuate something, even if you've walked it back with slightly more reasonable language.

[On Guard for Thee]

Someone who would seriously argue that the Liberals are going to "off vulnerable people" is not someone you can have a rational conversation with.

Agreed. I'd like to actually hear this "off vulnerable people" tedium to be supported by some actual fact. Otherwise it should be offed.

[dre]

You're still trying to insinuate something, even if you've walked it back with slightly more reasonable language.

You're wasting your time.

[TimG]

Sure, if someone actually said that, which is different from arguing that the Liberals are going to allow vulnerable people to be offed, preferably by a physician.

So your argument is assisted suicide should be available to everyone except those deemed 'vulnerable' who should be forced to live a life they don't want to live. I don't see the fairness in that.

The way I look at it there is no way to please everyone on this issue and some level of possible injustice must be tolerated.

If the law is too strict we create injustice by forcing people to live who do not want to live.

If the law is too lenient we create injustice because some people may be pressured into asking to die by exhausted caregivers.

I think we should err on the side of personal freedom and live with the possibility of the latter injustice provided the process allows for a private setting where the individual in question can express any misgivings to an adjudicator.

[scribblet]

So your argument is assisted suicide should be available to everyone except those deemed 'vulnerable' who should be forced to live a life they don't want to live. I don't see the fairness in that.

The way I look at it there is no way to please everyone on this issue and some level of possible injustice must be tolerated.

........................

I believe it should be available to adults who are terminally ill. I believe the proposed legislation is too broad, as per the link I posted from a lawyer and from a disabilities organization.

[Smallc]

I believe it should be available to adults who are terminally ill.

That would run counter to the court decision.

[scribblet]

That would run counter to the court decision.

Not according to the lawyer.. are you a lawyer?

Someone on my F/B page wrote this, I concur.

http://www.parl.gc.ca/HousePublications/Publication.aspx?Language=e&Mode=1&Parl=42&Ses=1&DocId=8120006

Please read fully the Liberal report on physician-assisted suicide noting that this might affect you one day. There’s a link to a pdf of the published report.

1. The dissenting report by Conservative MPs, appended at the end of the report layus out some critical safeguards missing from the Liberal report.

2. The NDP’s supplementary opinion however is petty and partisan as they attempt to milk a sensitive topic for political gain on PAS. Sad.

3. For the record, the bi-partisan effort on a pan-Canadian palliative care strategy began with Harold Albrecht (C-Kitchener-Conestoga) and Joe Comartin, not Charlie Angus. The NDP report, if it wanted to go down the smarmy road of taking credit should have recognized, in honourable fashion, the true pioneers on the issue.

4. Most Canadians, when thinking about PAS, automatically assume it is for the terminally ill. Yet the PAS strategy at the heart of the Liberal report is no guarantee that such a regime would be primarily, if not exclusively, for those with terminal illness with intolerable suffering. How is it, then, physician-assisted dying if it doesn't have to include those certain to die?

Contact Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and your MP and urge they create and adopt a regime on PAS that has stringent safeguards against abuse and that protect conscientious objection for medical professionals and institutions.

Edited March 1, 2016 by scribblet

[Smallc]

Not according to the lawyer.. are you a lawyer?

Are you a supreme court justice?

"grievous and irremediable medical condition"

Nowhere there does it say terminal.

[TimG]

I believe it should be available to adults who are terminally ill.

So you think forcing be to live that don't want to live because they don't have a disease that will kill them immediately is an ethical thing to do? I suppose you are in favor of torture too.

As I said, there is no perfect solution and we have to live with the possibility of some injustice. A system that respects an adult's right to decide for themselves is the best way to balance competing concerns.

[scribblet]

So I guess we just make assisted suicide or euthanasia a public service. Well, that aughta help reduce the over population.

[cybercoma]

Are you a supreme court justice?

"grievous and irremediable medical condition"

Nowhere there does it say terminal.

Irremediable is terminal, no?

Edit: I guess you could have an irremediable condition that causes you to suffer, but won't necessarily kill you. I think I see what you're getting at.

Edited March 1, 2016 by cybercoma

[Smallc]

Edit: I guess you could have an irremediable condition that causes you to suffer, but won't necessarily kill you. I think I see what you're getting at.

The thing is, I actually agree with Scribblet. I understand what the court is saying though. For some people, living isn't worth it because of a condition that isn't going away.

[Guest]

Irremediable is terminal, no?

Edit: I guess you could have an irremediable condition that causes you to suffer, but won't necessarily kill you. I think I see what you're getting at.

I knew someone with Alzheimer's who attempted suicide. Failed, and went on to die in a nursing home in pretty much a vegetative state some years later. As far as I know, that condition is not painful, or terminal, except in the fact that eventually you die without ever getting better. But you know it's happening, and you know there will come a day when you can no longer do anything about it, even if you want to.

I believe the right to a dignified death should be available to anyone in that position.

[cybercoma]

I see how irremediable may not mean terminal now. Thanks.

[nerve]

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/politics/liberals-to-whip-the-vote-in-favour-of-assisted-dying-law/article28734747/

I'd like to know how letting a doctor kill you is a charter issue.

Had Harper whipped a vote on an issue of conscience people would flip.

JT seems to want to control his MPs as much as Harper did.

I am not sure if this was touched on in the discussion I did not read but, Whiping is a course an issue however legislating something the courts have already ruled on is not controversial. Trying to redraft legislation to overide court ruling is problematic.

Oh and people always have the choice to be in the party or not. They have the ability to leave any time they want.

Life is a fundamental right. Fundamental right can be surrendered by consent but not forced from us not withstanding, for example military service.

Edited March 2, 2016 by nerve

[Topaz]

All the feds need to do it make the law a "choice" to Canadians then hand it down to the provinces and the health care sector there to handled the rest.

[poochy]

We are all dying, if i know i have a disease that will kill me but i will have a normal or nearly normal quality of life for the next two years is it ok if a doctor kills me now? What if it's five years? I dont know how any of this can be done without crossing some pretty dubious ethical lines. At some point it does become a suicide service for people that aren't necessarily dying anytime soon, or that aren't going to be bed ridden attached to machines in the mean time, im glad im not responsible for writing these laws.

[dre]

All the feds need to do it make the law a "choice" to Canadians then hand it down to the provinces and the health care sector there to handled the rest.

The provinces can already do that right now if they want. Quebec's law was upheld by the court.

[Boges]

http://news.nationalpost.com/full-comment/john-moore-i-support-assisted-suicide-but-what-were-proposing-goes-too-far

Assisted dying was supposed to be a matter of helping those with hours, days or weeks to live to die at a time of their choosing with dignity and a degree of certainly about the actual death itself. It was about providing autonomy to those whose decline might bring them to the point where they physically couldn’t follow through on their own plan to control their exit.

I am a quibbler. I do not believe that the working paper lays the framework for the kind of eugenics that the most hysterical critics always complain about but I do believe it goes too far. My objection to Ottawa’s framework for end of life centres on the critical difference between death and suicide. I have always seen assisted dying as the acceleration of a death that is already happening. What I fear is that we have leapfrogged over that notion to the state helping otherwise healthy people to end their lives simply because they cannot bring themselves to do it themselves. I don’t want to be brutish, but if one simply cannot abide life there are means to end it. The fact that some people find life to be unbearable is not an argument for why the state has to kill them.

The state should NOT! be killing otherwise physically healthy people because they're sad.

[BubberMiley]

You would think CPCers would be sympathetic to their own MP Stephen Fletcher, whose own irrevocable, non-terminal medical condition made him go against his party on this (and subsequently get thrown out of Cabinet). Empathy certainly isn't their strong suit.

[dre]

http://news.nationalpost.com/full-comment/john-moore-i-support-assisted-suicide-but-what-were-proposing-goes-too-far

The state should NOT! be killing otherwise physically healthy people because they're sad.

It wont. Sadness is not a "grievous and irremediable medical condition".