Honourable senators, I believe it is our right to make end-of-life decisions for ourselves. It is our responsibility as legislators to sort out the complicated issues inherent around this whole question of medical assistance in dying.

I have come to my views over the years watching loved ones die. I have had many discussions with those who are facing the end of life and wrestling with those issues. And, of course, we have all participated in the debates on Bill C-14 and the committee hearings around Bill C-7.

There are painful journeys taken by Canadian families every day. Every single day, people with incurable or irreversible medical conditions suffer needlessly in hospital beds or care homes. Far too many are home alone, even though they have lost physical or intellectual function, but alone because families are miles or countries away, or funds are limited.

Without the possibility of advance request for MAID, we have seen Canadians with terminal illnesses ending their lives earlier than they would like, or worse, spending the last moments of their lives confused and fearful that they will lose consciousness on the morning of the procedure and be forced to live on without awareness or faculties, with a nagging anxiety that they have lost control over a life they really no longer know.

So many will likely spend the rest of their life and, certainly, their final days with strangers; people who, of course, were once their loved ones, or they will spend months or years anticipating the worst and go on to suffer alone in their unfamiliar worlds with those flashes of awareness that they are no longer who they once were.

They will lose dignity, their character, their personality and, of course, their choices. For any of us who have witnessed this slow descent into hell, it is genuinely uncivilized.

The Quebec Court stated that no one should prevent our right — according to the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms — to make choices relating to our own “right to life, liberty and security of the person,” and a clear majority of Canadians agree; 86% agree that people with a serious degenerative or incurable disease should be able to request and obtain medical assistance in dying, and 74% said MAID should be accessible to all people with incurable diseases, even if their death is not imminent.

MAID legislation is about choices. It’s not about forcing anyone to die or treating it as some affordable option to deal with too many seniors or dangerous nursing homes. But the laws have created serious gaps in accessibility and they are not always administered fairly, consistently or in a timely manner. It is particularly difficult in rural communities like mine, often hours from a city hospital and with very limited access to doctors or lawyers.

I personally believe anyone should have the right to a legal advance request in a living will. No one who loses capacity unexpectedly should be forced to live the rest of their lives unconscious or in a hospital bed until their death. That is why we have do-not-resuscitate orders. I see an advance directive as exercising that very same right. Our well-stated, well-documented decisions about our own lives should be respected and upheld, even after losing our conscious ability to reaffirm that decision in the moment.

Some believe this is an oversimplified understanding of the issue, but I don’t agree. Many of us have lived it or are concerned for our own futures and are asking the what-ifs of aging.

I don’t want to fall a victim to the disease lottery. If my cancer returns, MAID would be possible. But if dementia or Alzheimer’s comes first, then there is no such promise.

I’ve said this in earlier remarks that we remember the phrase “Do not go gentle into that good night.” We don’t want to go gentle into that good night; we want to live life to our fullest. But when we cannot live our life as conscious, aware and connected human beings, then please give me the choice, while I am still able, to choose a gentler way into that good night.

Thank you, colleagues, for the time.