The Blueprint: Canada's Conservative Podcast - MAiD Update

00:00:00.000 Hello and welcome once again to The Blueprints. This is Canada's Conservative Podcast. I'm

00:00:08.740 your host, Jamie Schmael, Member of Parliament for Halliburton, Co-Orthelix Brock, with new

00:00:12.280 content for you every single Tuesday, 1.30pm Eastern Time. Please like, comment, share

00:00:17.140 and subscribe to this program. Of course, if you can't watch or listen to the program

00:00:21.580 in its entirety right this very second, download it and listen to it on platforms like Cast

00:00:25.340 Box, iTunes, Google Play and Spotify, you name it, it is out there. On today's show,

00:00:29.440 we're talking about a bit of a serious topic today, medical assistance in dying. It's

00:00:33.160 come up in the news lately and we want to make sure that the Conservative view is put forward

00:00:37.620 and you're on side on what we want to talk about. So, of course, we bring in the experts,

00:00:42.080 of course, Michael Cooper, Member of Parliament for St. Albert Edmonton. He is back on the

00:00:46.120 show as well as Dr. Stephen Ellis from Cumberland, Colchester. And in the background, you can't

00:00:50.780 see him, Teiko Van Papti from Langley, Alder Grove. He's right beside Super Producer Nick

00:00:56.020 overseeing what we are saying and doing here. Welcome, gentlemen. Thanks for

00:00:59.420 being here. Good to be with you, Jamie. Thanks, Harry.

00:01:01.320 All right. So, the government announced a little while ago that they're going to kick the can

00:01:04.280 down the road on medical assistance and dying. Why don't you tell us a bit about that? Then

00:01:07.960 we'll kind of reverse a bit to tell a bit of the history and then go into the discussion.

00:01:12.140 Sure. Well, last week, the Liberals introduced a bill to delay the expansion of made-for-mental

00:01:18.700 illness by three years. This is after, this is the second delay. They introduced 11th hour

00:01:27.100 legislation last year to put a pause on this expansion. And that is because leading medical

00:01:33.600 experts have said, this is not safe. It can't be implemented appropriately because there are

00:01:39.460 fundamental clinical issues. And so, in short, yes, the Liberals have kicked the can down the road.

00:01:46.340 But at the same time, they have made clear they are moving ahead with this expansion. Mark Holland,

00:01:51.560 the health minister, went so far as to say there is a moral imperative to offer death to persons who

00:01:58.520 are struggling with mental health issues. I would submit that highlights the moral bankruptcy of

00:02:04.540 Justin Trudeau's Liberals. And quite frankly, rather than kicking the can down the road, what the Liberals

00:02:10.160 need to do is admit that they've gotten it wrong and permanently scrap this radical experiment that

00:02:15.700 literally gambles with the lives of vulnerable persons.

00:02:18.740 Isn't that a pretty dangerous path to go on? If you can offer medical assistance in dying to an

00:02:24.940 individual suffering from mental health, in some cases, a mental health crisis can be temporary

00:02:29.420 to put an end to something that could be fixed. And you see the way the government's dealing with

00:02:37.160 its drug strategy, right? In British Columbia, in Vancouver in particular, it's more about access,

00:02:42.700 not about the treatment side. We should be looking at that.

00:02:45.280 You know, I think very clearly, and one of the things from testimony that was heard on the main

00:02:50.080 file is that, you know, psychiatrists and family doctors included who often make these diagnoses can

00:02:55.940 be right 2% of the time or 98% of the time. Nobody really knows. And I think it needs to be very clear

00:03:02.200 that the science around mental illness and its treatment, and as you may hear us say, irremediability,

00:03:09.440 meaning whether it really is unfixable in a less sophisticated term or not, the science around

00:03:16.260 mental illness is still in its infancy. The diagnosis is made by talking to people. There's

00:03:21.420 no blood test to have. So it's on the basis of one answer or another as to how you determine whether

00:03:29.180 the person indeed even has the illness. This is a very complicated subject, and I realize that it's

00:03:35.000 emotionally charged. However, we need to be a government, and a conservative government, of

00:03:39.880 course, would be responsive to its citizens and understanding the importance of getting decisions

00:03:46.280 that are very, very difficult like this right. And that's what a conservative government is committed

00:03:50.300 to doing.

00:03:50.920 Let's play a video here, which kind of gives us the history. So at the beginning, when this first came

00:03:55.660 out, it was inaccessible to those who had foreseen, death was in the foreseeable future. I know,

00:04:02.300 Mr. Cooper, you have a more precise language than that, but I think in essence, that's how it started.

00:04:07.200 Your video that we're going to play gives a bit of the history. It's about a minute long. Stick with

00:04:11.300 us. Super producer Nick is going to queue up cut one. Let's play cut one.

00:04:15.500 Canada was set to have this radical expansion of MAID come into effect this year, but fortunately,

00:04:22.400 the Liberals delayed implementation by one year after leading experts, including the chairs of

00:04:30.560 psychiatry at all 17 medical schools, said that Canada isn't ready for MAID and mental illness.

00:04:37.040 And the leading medical professionals said that Canada isn't ready for two fundamental reasons.

00:04:43.120 The first is that it is impossible to accurately predict irremediability. Under the law, in order to

00:04:51.040 qualify for MAID, someone must suffer from an irremediable disease or illness. In other words, 0.98

00:04:58.880 one must suffer from a disease or illness in which they are not going to get better, and that they

00:05:04.160 are in an irreversible state of decline. Medical professionals said this can't accurately be

00:05:11.920 predicted. And so therefore, persons who could get better, who could go on to lead healthy and happy

00:05:19.040 lives will have their lives prematurely ended. That pretty much sums it up. It started, as you

00:05:26.400 mentioned, from somebody suffering from, say, cancer, where the treatment is no longer offered, to what

00:05:32.160 we have now when people are going through mental health. And like we've all said, it's a very dark path.

00:05:38.240 Well, these are very, as I said, fundamental clinical issues. As Dr. Ellis noted, irremediability

00:05:45.600 being one. Another is it is difficult for clinicians to assess whether someone with a mental illness,

00:05:53.120 whether in the context of MAID, they are making a rational request or one motivated by suicidal ideation. And

00:06:01.280 that's underscored by the fact that in approximately 90 percent of deaths by suicide,

00:06:07.360 persons have a diagnosable mental illness. All of these issues are significant. They're not going to

00:06:14.640 be resolved in three years, just as they were not resolved in the past year when the Liberals put a

00:06:21.200 one-year pause. So it's why we're calling on the Liberals to not kick the can down the road further,

00:06:27.440 but simply scrap this expansion. And how can they be so tone deaf to all this opposition?

00:06:33.520 Well, you know what? I think one of the other things that we need to be

00:06:37.040 very clear on is that in studies out there, Canadians have made their opposition in a different way,

00:06:42.720 perhaps, but saying that 50 percent of Canadians out there with mental health issues are not able

00:06:47.920 to access the treatment that they desire to have to help them get better. So when we look at the

00:06:52.880 terrible state of affairs of the Canadian medical system and understand that people are not even 0.86

00:06:57.760 able to access the treatment that they need, how could we possibly say that they have an

00:07:03.360 irremediable mental health illness? I agree totally with my colleague, Michael. I think he's done great

00:07:09.120 work on this file. But for Canadians to understand these issues, it is incredibly important to have

00:07:14.720 a government that just does not support their mental health and to see the fact that mental health

00:07:19.600 and physical health are incredibly important to be a productive member of society and have a long

00:07:24.000 and happy life. And I would just add, just to provide a little bit of context on the history,

00:07:29.760 how did we get here? It started with the Liberals accepting a radical Senate amendment to another bill

00:07:39.360 and David Lamedi, who was then Justice Minister, shut down debate and they rammed the amendment and the bill

00:07:49.360 through, setting in motion this timeline to implement MAID for mental illness. So on a matter that impacts some of

00:07:58.960 the most vulnerable persons in Canadian society but constitutes a significant expansion of MAID,

00:08:04.400 the Liberals made the ideological decision to move ahead with this and then decided to study it

00:08:10.160 after the fact, which is, and upon studying it, what they've heard loud and clear from leading

00:08:16.880 experts is that this should not move forward. So they've gotten it completely backwards in terms

00:08:21.760 of how they've approached this issue. And it underscores that what we have with this Liberal

00:08:27.040 government is a government that makes ideological decisions as opposed to ones based on evidence-based

00:08:33.040 decision-making. But then it also goes into their departments, that kind of vision or their

00:08:37.920 thinking. As I've talked about with Blake Richards, our veterans critic before, that veteran who

00:08:42.480 wanted a chairlift was offered MAID. Can you imagine the veteran saying, I'd like a chairlift,

00:08:49.680 I'm having trouble getting around. And the person on the other end of the phone says, well,

00:08:52.720 have you tried medical assistance and dying? And apparently that wasn't the first time Veterans

00:08:58.000 Affairs officials have recommended that to veterans. This government is so, I think,

00:09:05.360 is so out of touch. It's definitely time for a change. But what do we do now? What's the next steps?

00:09:11.360 Well, I mean, the obvious next step is really simple. We need an election here in Canada.

00:09:14.960 Well, aside from that.

00:09:15.520 You know, but that being said, I think that continuing to get the word out with respect to MAID is very

00:09:20.400 important. We have had the great ability to do some town halls across the country. There are still

00:09:26.320 many Canadians out there who aren't even aware of this expansion of medical assistance and dying.

00:09:31.520 And I think that that's, that is incredibly important. And of course, being here on the

00:09:35.200 blueprint is a, is a very, very important part of that. But Canadians also need to realize the

00:09:41.200 ideological nature of this liberal NDP coalition, that they don't really care about the citizens,

00:09:48.560 that they want to move forward with the agenda that they have. And of course,

00:09:52.640 the conservative agenda is, is very much different in terms of being responsive to the needs of,

00:09:57.280 of those who put us in this office and, and being good stewards of that.

00:10:01.040 So Michael, you were put on the committee right at the beginning in 2015, 2016. How have you

00:10:07.040 witnessed the, the liberals and their, the mindset through this each and every

00:10:10.960 process that we've seemed to find ourselves going through?

00:10:13.440 Well, at the time I warned and others warned about a slippery slope. And that was more or less

00:10:21.760 dismissed by the liberals. And what we have seen in the time of now seven years is a major slippery

00:10:30.880 slope, uh, that has come to fruition. Um, when Bill C-14, the original made legislation became law,

00:10:39.840 what was contemplated was, uh, a procedure that persons who were at the end of their life,

00:10:47.440 who were suffering intolerably, who had the capacity to consent, could make a decision to end

00:10:53.360 their life just a little bit sooner. Now you can debate and argue the merits of that, but we had a

00:10:59.840 Supreme Court decision and that was what parliament contemplated. Uh, to then move as the liberals did to

00:11:06.960 removing the criteria that death be reasonably foreseeable, and now to move to the next step

00:11:12.720 of expanding MAID in cases of mental illness. What we are now dealing with in terms of the concept

00:11:18.400 of MAID is something very, very different from what parliament initially contemplated. What we are

00:11:23.200 now talking about is something that is tantamount to state-sanctioned, state-facilitated suicide.

00:11:30.080 Let's queue up cut two because we have video on this and, uh, actually talking about basically what you

00:11:34.960 just said, the slippery slope. So let's hear it in the words of Doc Ellis. Play cut two.

00:11:39.600 Now what are we doing? You don't need to influence doctors because the liberal government is giving

00:11:44.960 away opioids for free. And then don't worry Canadians, because when you're addicted to these opioids

00:11:53.360 that this liberal NDP coalition is giving you for free in their crazed experiment, what are they going

00:11:59.920 to do? They're going to kill you. Nonsense. Absolute nonsense. To continue to allow the propagation of 1.00

00:12:09.440 medical assistance in dying, the euphemism by which it's now become known from a procedure which was

00:12:19.360 destined for those who had uncontrolled pain with a reasonable foreseeable death, now onto folks who have

00:12:27.600 suffering because of homelessness perhaps, because they can't find a job.

00:12:32.240 I think there was an instance of someone in Mississauga, the director of a food bank in Mississauga,

00:12:37.040 someone searching for information on MAID because they couldn't just cope with life because

00:12:43.600 the liberals have made the, you know, food, housing, everything so unaffordable.

00:12:47.760 Well, I mean, as you all know, these are the considerable difficulties facing Canadians nowadays,

00:12:55.360 is the terrible affordability crisis. We know that many Canadians are $200 away from insolvency

00:13:02.240 every month, and it's only getting worse for Canadians. You know, the point I was attempting to

00:13:06.720 make, and just to be clear for Canadians, is that substance use disorder is classified as a mental

00:13:14.000 illness as well. It is in the DSM-5, the Diagnostics and Statistical Manual, fifth edition,

00:13:20.640 which would be the basis for making a decision about what is a mental illness and what the criteria

00:13:25.760 are, etc. And so when you look at that difficulty, then clearly people who are suffering with drug

00:13:32.800 addiction in the vernacular could be eligible to have MAID. And again, there are many other instances,

00:13:39.440 and that goes along with what Michael said, with respect to the terrible slippery slope,

00:13:45.120 which we've found Canada on, which we believe is our job to make Canadians aware of it and to stop

00:13:52.000 that decline. We're almost out of time, but of course, the guests always get the last word,

00:13:56.240 as both of you know. Michael, why don't you take the floor? Well, the only good news of this three-year

00:14:03.120 delay is that it's not happening now, and as a result, there will be an election between now and

00:14:10.720 the end of that three-year extension. And so Canadians will have a choice. They can vote for

00:14:19.040 Justin Trudeau's radical liberals who want to offer death to persons who are struggling with mental

00:14:26.240 illness, or if they can elect a common-sense, conservative government led by Pierre Pauliev that

00:14:30.880 will give Canadians who are struggling with mental health hope instead of death.

00:14:34.720 A bit of compassion would be nice. Doc Ellis.

00:14:37.200 Well, thanks very much, Jamie. And just to be very quick about this, I think that

00:14:42.160 Canadians are now ready for a government that's going to axe the tax, build the houses, fix the

00:14:48.160 budget, and stop the crime. And when the next election comes, then we expect all of you out there

00:14:54.080 to be voting for us and to do those things exactly. Thank you very much. Dr. Stephen Ellis,

00:14:59.200 Member of Parliament for Cumberland-Colchester, also Michael Cooper, Member of Parliament for St.

00:15:04.160 Albert-Edmonton. In the background, the supervisor, Takeo Van Papta Langley-Aldergrope is his writing.

00:15:10.000 And of course, as the doc says, we would like more and more voters to look to the Conservative Party,

00:15:15.680 but in order to do that, they need to get this message out. Please like, comment, subscribe,

00:15:19.040 and share this program. Tell your friends they can download it, listen to it on platforms like CastBox,

00:15:23.520 iTunes, Google Play, and Spotify. You name it, it is out there. New content for you every single

00:15:28.240 Tuesday, 1.30 p.m. Eastern Time. Until next week, remember, low taxes, less government,

00:15:33.120 more freedom. That's the Blue Pills.

The Blueprint: Canada's Conservative Podcast - February 08, 2024

MAiD Update

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