Thank you, honourable senators. As I have watched our deliberations and discussions over the last two days, I am filled with pride that I have the privilege to be one of you. We have shown Canadians that the Senate is the place where one can have reasoned, independent, civil, non-partisan debate, and that we are no longer the "slumber zone," in the language of the media.

I may not agree with the positions of the senators who have spoken before me on Bill C-14, but they have all done so with great conviction and intelligence and I salute them all.

I will however add my voice to Senator Lankin's call for the chamber to recognize that it is made up of three different parts. There are the two political caucuses and then there is us. For now we are a small group, but we are positioned to grow, so I urge the chamber to consider us as your full partners with equal voice, not a group of people for whom you are making kind yet special accommodations. I thank you for all the kindnesses, but I also know kindnesses can be taken away, rights cannot. It would indeed have been a signal if, along with Senators Cowan and Carignan, either Senator Sinclair or Senator Pratte could have made the opening statements, and I hope we see something like this happen in September.

I will speak very briefly on Bill C-14. Much has been said on many different aspects of it, and I would like to signal my support for a federal bill which regulates medically assisted dying so that it is accessible to all who desire and qualify for it.

This is not an easy position for me to take. I grew up in a culture where you wait respectfully for death. My mother, who lives with me and has lived with me for 30 years, now has spinal stenosis, a condition which we have heard much about. She is bent over by 50 per cent and her condition is going to get progressively worse. We know that.

She talks to me often about death and she talks to me often about a good death, and she asks me what we are doing in this chamber, and we talk about our cultural beliefs because these will get in the way of whatever choice we make. And I say to her that this law and our deliberations today are not about her or me or about our personal beliefs but what is the right response for all Canadians given the Supreme Court ruling. Our job is to ensure that we deliberate on the merits and demerits of the bill and that we pay special attention to the rights of minorities and vulnerable people.

So I want to speak about a vulnerability that has not yet been referred to, and that is poverty and put a very brief poverty lens on Bill C-14.

Honourable senators, we know that death comes to everyone. It does not discriminate between rich and poor; it does not discriminate based on your class or religion or your occupation but strikes all of us eventually. In that sense, even if life is not equal, death certainly is the great equalizer. Using modern-day language, perhaps one could say death seeks equal opportunity. The bill that we send back to the House of Commons should, therefore, ensure equally that access to its provisions are not variably available, but universally so.

I first want to examine the question of what will happen if the bill does not pass. Like most of you, I don't believe the sky will fall in. People will have access through provincial systems or through provincial courts where no system exists, but there will be diversity on how each province chooses to interpret the guidelines, as has been the case, we know, on abortion. I can foresee Canadians shopping for the option in different provinces that suits their conditions best. And shopping, as we all know, can be expensive.

Poor people, people who live in social housing, people on welfare, cleaning ladies, taxi drivers, new immigrants, single mothers, many senior citizens, do not have the resources to travel with companions to other provinces. Neither do they have the time, the money, the social capital or the knowledge of the justice system to embark on costly and exhausting court challenges.

Let me give you some examples, and you all know them well. Kay Carter lived in a nice nursing home in Vancouver and could afford to travel to Zurich to access physician-assisted death. Gillian Bennett was the wife of noted philosopher Jonathan Bennett who was educated in Oxford. Sue Rodriguez was a real estate agent and came from a solid middle-class background. Gloria Taylor was a residential care worker. Ms. S, the plaintiff in the Alberta case, was a clinical psychologist

None of them were wealthy, but they were not poor. And while this is certainly not evidence but rather anecdotes, my intuition tells me that access through the court systems would be out of reach for poor people.

This brings me to Bill C-14. We have heard from many lawyers and many experts, and I must say as a layperson I'm conflicted with what I hear, but even as a layperson I can predict that with the lack of clarity and ambiguity in language we can expect a range of lawsuits from individuals who seek to confirm their access to it.

Again I ask you, who has the resources, the social capital, the time, the money to embark on such an arduous journey? Not poor people.

So let's have a bill that provides equal access across the country, but let's also have a bill that, as far as we can, negates the need for expensive court challenges. As we proceed on our deliberations, and keeping the rights of vulnerable poor people in mind, we must consider the unequal impact of no legislation and the unequal impact of flawed legislation. Thank you.