Physician-assisted suicide should be legal in Canada

Three of the reasons are these:

1)  We die in many different ways, just as we live in many different ways.  With some of us, the standard type of care for the dying may not work well enough, especially towards the end.  If we want help with dying so as to avoid a bad death, we should be able to get that help.  It should not matter if we are in the minority; Canada prides itself on respecting the rights of minorities.

2)  If it turns out that we will die from a disease which can cause years of misery (such as ALS, MS and many others) instead of from a faster-moving disease which may be well handled by the standard approach, this is not something we chose.  It is unjust to punish us for something that is not our fault.

3)  We will be alive while we are dying -- our dying is the last part of our life.  The right to life means more than just the right to have a beating heart.  It means the right to live as ourselves, to remain true to our ideals, until our last moments.  If this means dying sooner rather than later, and if we need help to do it painlessly, that help should be available to us.

Therefore, your petitioners call upon the House of Commons to develop and enact legislation that will make physician-assisted suicide available within an open, regulated and equitable system.  The development phase could include such steps as these:
a)  a pilot project in one city;
b) a referendum or other process whereby large numbers of citizens are consulted directly; and/or
c) a multi-party committee to study assisted-suicide laws and bills that have already been created, both inside and outside Canada, and then prepare a bill for presentation to the House.