Issues & Impact

In 2014 Steven Fletcher introduced two bills proposing a federal framework for physician-assisted death, one setting eligibility and safeguards, the other creating an independent monitoring commission. Neither reached a vote, but both preceded the Supreme Court’s Carter decision and Parliament’s 2016 law.

Manitoba has repeatedly faced the problem of matching major hydroelectric investments with reliable, well-priced export markets. For nearly two decades Steven Fletcher has argued that stronger east-west transmission could improve reliability, widen the market for clean power, and reduce dependence on north-south exports.

In June 2005, as an opposition backbencher, Steven Fletcher won House of Commons approval by 231 votes to 53 for a motion calling on the government to fully fund and implement the Canadian Strategy for Cancer Control, alongside national strategies for mental illness and heart disease.

Minister of State for Democratic Reform from October 2008 to May 2011, responsible for a reform programme spanning Senate ethics, terms and selection, representation by population, advance voting and the financing of politics. He returned to the same arguments in the Manitoba Legislature from 2016, and from 2017 made them as an independent member.

He made the same argument on his first day in the House of Commons in 2004 and on one of his last in 2015. Canada has become very good at saving people, and much less good at letting them live afterwards.

A geological engineer’s argument that the real question is not whether to protect land or mine it, but where to do each, and that the answer should be chosen deliberately rather than by accident.