Health Canada regulations require doctors to offer euthanasia.

Alex Schadenberg
Executive Director
Euthanasia Prevention Coalition

Terry O'Neill has done significant research into the Health Canada Model Practice Standard for Medical Assistance in Dying (MAiD). MAiD is an acronym of euthanasia. Canada legalized euthanasia in June 2016 by creating an exception in the Criminal Code to homicide.

If you have a story of feeling coerced to euthanasia contact Alex Schadenberg at: alex@epcc.ca

In his article that was published in the BC Catholic on November 7, O'Neill points out:

"Health Canada recommendation that would require doctors and nurse practitioners to raise the possibility of euthanasia with patients they believe might be agreeable to — and eligible for — Medical Assistance in Dying (MAiD)."

In response to the Health Canada Model Practice Standard, Dr Will Johnston, a family physician and leader of Euthanasia Resistance BC stated:

“Whoever is in charge of ‘Death Canada,’ as I’ll call them, seems to have forgotten the promises that were made to the medical community when euthanasia was first proposed — that no one would be forced to become complicit in it,”

“And now they’re simply reneging. They’re violating that promise by insisting on compelled speech.

Dr Will Johnston

Johnston further told O'Neill:

“The very process of a doctor notifying suggestible people, potentially suggestible people, of suicide-by-doctor validates it and is an inducement to consider it,”

“So you’re actually, by your questioning, by your exposition of the availability of euthanasia to this person, influencing their value system to consider euthanasia,”

“It becomes a type of self-fulfilling prophecy — that you’re going to recruit people into a euthanasia mindset by describing in approving terms the availability of this outrage against decency.”

Alex Schadenberg (myself) told O'Neill that I knew about the Health Canada Model Practise Standard and I was saddened, shocked and angry about it.

Alex Schadenberg

O'Neill further reported:

Schadenberg said that initiating MAiD discussions is already common because euthanasia is widely perceived as a medical treatment for the chronically ill and elderly.

“In fact,” he said, “because the intention of MAiD is to kill the patient, it is the very opposite of medical treatment.”

O'Neill then comments on my experience with doctors coercing people towards euthanasia:

He said he believes every major hospital in Canada now has a MAiD team responsible for informing patients about euthanasia availability. “That’s why I’m getting so many phone calls from patients complaining they are being ‘pestered and pestered’ to succumb to MAiD.

“Some of the MAiD teams are very sales-oriented,” Schadenberg said. “They can’t understand why you don’t want it.”

I then urged Federal or Provincial governments to bring forth legislation or regulations to prohibit this type of coercion. O'Neill reported:

He said the issue is serious enough to warrant legislation making it an offence for any medical practitioner to initiate a discussion of MAiD.

“We’re simply seeing too many people who feel pressured and coerced to agree to MAiD,” Schadenberg said. “It has to stop.”

The Euthanasia Prevention Coalition regularly receives calls asking us how to get the MAiD team to stop asking them if they want MAiD.

If you have experience with feeling coerced to euthanasia contact Alex Schadenberg at: alex@epcc.ca