Mr. Don Wycherly:

Yes. Sorry. You are very contrary.

This conversation is happening in a vacuum. Having end-of-life options presented while having no regard for the convention and its optional protocol seems unethical. If the UNCRPD was implemented and the optional protocol ratified, we in the disability community would feel safer. It would provide us with a sense of value, worth and ambition. Our rights would be recognised, respected and protected. Not implementing the UNCRPD or ratifying the optional protocol while proposing end-of-life options is limiting choices and rights of people with terminal illnesses and impairments. One might be forgiven for feeling cynical or sensing something more sinister is at foot.

To put the optional protocol and convention in context for the committee, the fact that it is not ratified means disabled people, including those with terminal illnesses, are not rights-holders. The State needs to engage with us in a real and concrete fashion. Those expensive ad campaigns are overloaded with the toxic subtext of the burden and cost of illness and impairment. In that context, "contribution", "diversity" and "interdependency" would be words that send affirmative messages.

The accusation of scaremongering or conflating issues of the past would seem disrespectful. The Canadian situation, where permissions for euthanasia have been extended beyond those facing imminent death and now cover many who do not have adequate social and healthcare provision, is frightening and worth referencing. Across Europe, where disabled people are targeted by violence, coercive control, segregation and infantilisation, disabled lives are punished. We are treated as economic burdens. This attitude demonstrates the systemic endemic levels of ableism that we experience. Many people with impairments, like myself, internalise those messages.