Professor Trudo Lemmens:

It is an interesting question, were there no protests. The law was expanded in the midst of the pandemic so the committee can see already what kind of challenge that raised for persons in the disability community. It was virtually impossible to get together and protest in Ottawa. There was a disability filibuster organised online which was well attended, where people testified. I listened in to some of these testimonies and many of them were heartbreaking, with people in the disability community expressing concern about what it meant for them that people were now telling them there would now be a fast-track procedure for them to access dying. I would urge people to be careful about saying there is broad popularity. When we are talking about human rights, we are not talking about majority opinions about whose life is worth living. The disability community is deeply concerned about the normalisation of dying, particularly targeting persons with disabilities as if they really need it. The community at large, outside the end-of-life context, is saying this should not be offered particularly to them. I would express concern. This may also be a question. There seems to be an acceptance that people are all in favour of assisted dying. I am certainly not in favour of the current Canadian law, as members can see.

I have also become increasingly concerned about how we have seen a shift in the mentality and thinking about what it means when physicians are involved in ending the life of persons because of disabilities or chronic illness. I am concerned about what that means for seeing the role of medicine and accepting the limits of medicine when it comes with complex concepts such as suffering. I would say we have to be careful about saying there is broad support in the Canadian community. There is certainly broad support for the initial law. There was less support for the expansion outside the end-of-life context. I think in the last years we have seen a growing expression of unease and a growing awareness among people in the community at large that there are problems with the practice. There are certainly still a majority of people, I would say, deeply concerned about the expansion that is due to take place in March 2024 in the context of mental health. This is not an uncontroversial practice in the Canadian context; far from it. There is a groundswell of expressions of concern certainly at some of the practices we have witnessed. When we are talking about human rights and disability rights, it is not about majority rule.