More than 5400 Canadians died by euthanasia in 2019 more than 13,000 since legalization

Alex Schadenberg
Executive Director, Euthanasia Prevention Coalition.

The media was reporting that there have been more than 6700 MAID deaths in Canada since it was legalized. I estimate that there have been at least 13,000 euthanasia deaths and here is how I defend this estimate.

The 6700 deaths was based on the Fourth Interim Report on Medical Assistance in Dying released by Health Canada on April 25, 2019 which stated that there were 6700 assisted deaths up to October 31, 2018. The data in the report from Quebec and the three Territories was incomplete. The Quebec data in the Health Canada report was up until March 31, 2018. (Link to my commentary on the report)

The Health Canada report was sloppy by stating that the number assisted deaths represented 1.12% of all deaths. The Health Canada report divided the number of reported assisted deaths into the total deaths, but they did not remove the total Quebec deaths from March 31 - October 31 from the equation.

The number of assisted deaths as of December 31, 2018, was approximately 7949.

(The government of Canada estimated that there were 5444 assisted deaths in 2019 and 4438 assisted deaths in 2018 in Canada on February 24, 2020)

On March 21, 2019 I reported that there were 7949 assisted deaths in Canada as of December 31, 2018 representing 4235 assisted deaths in 2018, an increase of 50% over 2017, representing almost 1.5% all deaths in 2018. The data from my report was obtained from a presentation by Jocelyn Downie, an academic euthanasia activist, who spoke on March 15, 2019 to a Royal Society of Canada luncheon in Ottawa. 

Similar to the Netherlands and Belgium, nearly all of the assisted deaths are euthanasia (lethal injection) rather than assisted suicide.

We don't have national assisted death statistics for 2019 but we do have accurate data from Ontario and Alberta. 

According to the data from the Ontario Office of the Chief Coroner there were 1789 reported assisted deaths in 2019, 1499 in 2018, 841 in 2017 representing nearly a 20% increase in Ontario assisted deaths in 2019. 

What is more striking about the data is the increase in the second half of 2019 where there were 1015 assisted deaths in the second half of 2019 up from 774 in the first six months of 2019, meaning that Ontario will likely have more than 2000 assisted deaths in 2020.

Alberta Health Services updates there assisted death data regularly. The Alberta data indicates that there were 377 assisted deaths in 2019 up from 307 in 2018, and 206 in 2017. The data indicates a 23% increase in Alberta assisted deaths in 2019.

A report by Marney Blunt for Global News stated that the number of assisted deaths are increasing quickly in Manitoba. Blunt reported that the number of Manitobans dying by euthanasia skyrocketed. The report stated:

When medically-assisted death first became legal in 2016, 42 people requested the service and 24 received it. That number rose in 2017, when 142 people requested MAiD and 63 people received it. 

Those numbers almost doubled in 2018, when 239 requested and 138 received. Last year, 313 people asked for a medically-assisted death, and 177 people received it.

The data indicates a 28% increase in Manitoba reported assisted deaths in 2019.

Since Ontario, Alberta and Manitoba had approximately a 20% increase in 2019, I would assume that there was a similar increases nationally. Therefore there approximately 5000  (4235 + 20%) assisted deaths in Canada in 2019 and 13,000  assisted deaths since legalization. Even if the numbers were slightly lower than 5000 in 2019, today is January 20, so it is safe to say that there has been 13,000 assisted deaths since legalization.

But that is not the whole story.

Canada's data collection system does not account for under-reporting of assisted deaths, but Quebec's data collection system can account for under-reporting. Quebec employs a multi report system making it possible to uncover the number of times a physician didn't report the assisted death.

Based on an analysis by Amy Hasbrouck and Taylor Hyatt, the Quebec interim report indicated that between April 1, 2017 – March 31, 2018 there were 142 unaccounted assisted deaths in the data representing 17% of all assisted deaths. The Quebec Interim report also indicated that 7 assisted deaths did not fit the criteria of the law, 22 assisted deaths did not follow procedural safeguards and in 67 assisted deaths, the physician did not provide the necessary information to determine if the patient fit the criteria of the law.

Based on the Quebec Interim report, if we extrapolate the data to all of Canada, it would suggest that there may have been more than 2000 (17%) unreported assisted deaths in Canada and approximately 60 assisted deaths that did not fit the criteria of the law.

This article is based on hard facts and conservative estimates. The fact is that Canada's assisted death law is quickly going out of control. The recent federal government consultation, that employs biased questions, is not concerned about Canadians whose lives are taken without due process.

Manitoba: MAID euthanasia deaths are increasing quickly.

Alex Schadenberg
Executive Director, Euthanasia Prevention Coalition

Last week I reported that there were approximately 5000 assisted deaths in Canada in 2019 and 13,000 since legalization.

On January 20th I reported that, in Ontario there were 1789 reported assisted deaths in 2019, 1499 in 2018, 841 in 2017 representing an almost 20% increase in 2019.

The increase in the second half of 2019 is striking. In Ontario there were 1015 assisted deaths in the second half of 2019 up from 774 in the first six months of 2019. Ontario will likely have more than 2000 assisted deaths in 2020.

On January 14th I reported that the Alberta data indicates that there were 377 reported assisted deaths in 2019 up from 307 in 2018, and 206 in 2017. The data indicates a 23% increase in Alberta assisted deaths in 2019.

A report by Marney Blunt for Global News states that the number of assisted deaths is increasing quickly in Manitoba. Blunt reported that the number of Manitobans dying by euthanasia skyrocketed in the past few years. The report stated:

When medically-assisted death first became legal in 2016, 42 people requested the service and 24 received it. That number rose in 2017, when 142 people requested MAiD and 63 people received it.

Those numbers almost doubled in 2018, when 239 requested and 138 received. Last year, 313 people asked for a medically-assisted death, and 177 people received it.

The data indicates a 28% increase in Manitoba reported assisted deaths in 2019.

Sadly, I expect a further increase in assisted deaths now that a Quebec court struck down the "terminal illness" requirement in the law. The Quebec court decision was not appealed by the government causing an incremental extension of the law to people who are not terminally ill and may be psychologically suffering.

After the election, Prime Minister Trudeau announced that a first priority for the government is to amend Canada's euthanasia law.

Do you have a personal euthanasia story? Sharing your story may help us prevent other euthanasia deaths. Contact us at: 1-877-439-3348 or info@epcc.ca.

The Extreme Ableism of Assisted Suicide

The following article was published by Not Dead Yet on January 28, 2020

By Diane Coleman, President & CEO Not Dead Yet

Diane Coleman

I just came across a brilliant letter that John Kelly sent to the Washington, D.C. Council when they were considering an assisted suicide bill in 2016. I should have posted it here then, but I am doing so now because it’s one of the best discussions I’ve read of the core problem that assisted suicide advocates have with disability.

Let me just highlight one example from the letter, a Washington Post quote from Dan Diaz, who is still working for Compassion and Choices, traveling around the country doing press conferences and testifying on their behalf in favor of these dangerous bills.

“If I find myself in a situation where I can’t go to the bathroom on my own, where someone has to change my diapers, where I can’t feed myself, where I can’t care for the people around me, where other people have to move me around to keep me from having bedsores, I would then submit, ‘Is that really living?’ ” Diaz said. 

Although assisted suicide proponents often accuse opponents of fearing death, the letter below demonstrates how profoundly proponents fear and loath disability. Their ableism is so extreme that they want to carve a vaguely defined segment of old, ill and disabled people out of suicide prevention, enlist our healthcare system in streamlining our path to death, and immunizing everyone involved from any legal consequences, thereby denying us the equal protection of the law.

November 1, 2016

Chairman Mendelson, Councilmembers:

John Kelly

My name is John Kelly. I am the New England Regional Director for Not Dead Yet, the national disability rights group that has long opposed euthanasia and assisted suicide. I am also the director of Not Dead Yet’s Massachusetts state affiliate, Second Thoughts MA: Disability Rights Advocates against Assisted Suicide.

I refer you to two recent articles in the Washington Post. Read together, they must lead you to vote against assisted suicide bill B21-38. Assisted suicide isn’t about physical pain at all, despite what proponents have told you. And assisted suicide benefits one specific group in the district and country, wealthier white people, while disadvantaging poorer people, and people of color specifically.

The first article came out last Monday, October 24. Titled “‘Death with dignity’ laws and the desire to control how one’s life ends,” this article exposes the main argument for assisted suicide, “that terminally ill patients have the right to die without suffering intractable pain in their final days or weeks,” as a big lie.

Author Liz Szabo reports that assisted suicide proponent group Compassion & Choices “focuses heavily on the need to relieve dying patients of pain.” One ad has the assisted suicide bill giving “a dying person the option to avoid the worst pain and suffering at the end of life.”

Yet the latest research shows that terminally ill patients who seek aid in dying aren’t primarily concerned about pain. Those who have actually used these laws have been far more concerned about controlling the way they exit the world than about controlling pain.

As one California doctor said, “It’s almost never about pain. It’s about dignity and control.”

And that’s what the Oregon and Washington data show. Pain is the least of people’s concerns. Doctors report people requesting the lethal drugs because of psychosocial suffering about becoming disabled through their illness. It’s mental distress about becoming dependent on other people (“losing autonomy” 92%), losing abilities (“less able to engage in activities making life enjoyable” 90%), shame and perceived/actual loss of social status (“loss of dignity” 79%), needing help with incontinence (“losing control of bodily functions” 48%), and believing that suicide would leave loved ones better off (“burden on family, friends/caregivers” 41%).

Dr. Ira Byock, a leading palliative care expert, told the Post, “it’s a bait and switch. We’re actually helping people hasten their deaths because of existential suffering. That’s chilling to me.” As Byock said, almost all pain is controllable. Hospice staff are on call 24 hours a day, and caregivers can be trained in administering emergency pain medication until staff arrive.

The real reasons that people want to commit assisted suicide, proponents admit, are about being dependent on other people for personal care. We disability rights activists have been pointing this out all along.

Barbara Coombs Lee, who as an insurance company executive wrote Oregon’s assisted suicide law, brought up the case of the woman who committed assisted suicide because she was incontinent. The woman wrote that “the idea of having somebody take care of me like I am a little 2-month-old baby is just absolutely repulsive. It’s more painful than any of the pain from the cancer.”

Lee described scenarios of disability that she said were “worse than death.” Proponent Dan Diaz emphasized the supposed horrors of disability.

“If I find myself in a situation where I can’t go to the bathroom on my own, where someone has to change my diapers, where I can’t feed myself, where I can’t care for the people around me, where other people have to move me around to keep me from having bedsores, I would then submit, ‘Is that really living?’

This isn’t a public health bill, it’s a death before disability bill.

So this is what some of you are planning to vote for. You are not protecting DC residents from agonizing pain. You are promoting the particular views of one specific group of people, described by Obamacare architect Ezekiel Emanuel as predominantly “white, well-insured, and college-educated.” People who are used to being in control of every aspect of their lives.

So, like so much in the US, assisted suicide is an issue that cuts across class and race. The 2012 election map in Massachusetts shows that wealthier, whiter areas voted heavily for legalization, while working-class whites and people of color voted strongly against. People turning out for Barack Obama and current Sen. Elizabeth Warren defeated the proposal.

The second article, from October 17, by reporter of color Fenit Nirappil, was titled “Right-to-die law faces skepticism in nation’s capital: ‘it’s really aimed at old black people.’” It details the opposition to assisted suicide of Washington’s black majority.

Many in the black community distrust the health-care system and fear that racism in life will translate into discrimination in death, said Patricia King, a Georgetown Law School professor who has written about the racial dynamics of assisted death.

“Historically, African Americans have not had a lot of control over their bodies, and I don’t think offering them assisted suicide is going to make them feel more autonomous,” King said.

District residents told Nirappil of concerns that “low-income black senior citizens may be steered to an early death”, and that in the end, assisted suicide is really all about reducing government healthcare costs.

Derek Humphry, who founded the Hemlock Society (Compassion & Choices’ original name), wrote years ago of the “unspoken argument,” that assisted suicide will gain traction because of “the realities of the increasing cost of health care in an aging society, because in the final analysis, economics, not the quest for broadened individual liberties or increased autonomy, will drive assisted suicide to the plateau of acceptable practice.”

Assisted suicide, like suicide in general, is primarily practiced and promoted by white people. Nirappil reported that national leaders in the assisted suicide movement are all white, and that most of the participants at a recent rally were white. In the 18 year history of the Oregon assisted suicide law, only one black person has used the program. In a state that is now 22% nonwhite, 97% of assisted suicide deaths have been white.

Non-Hispanic whites also commit regular suicide at a rate 2.5 times that of blacks. Rather than importing a predominantly-white practice as a solution for the district, you must say no to this bill and the big lie it hides behind. Assisted suicide is not about protecting suffering people from physical pain, it’s about satisfying the control needs of a group of people, predominantly white, who would rather die than become dependent on another human being.

Please respect your constituents, understand the danger this bill represents, and reject this bill. Thank you.

Canadian MAID (euthanasia) online consultation questionnaire was a sham and the data is unreliable.

Alex Schadenberg
Executive Director, Euthanasia Prevention Coalition

On January 14, I wrote an article urging EPC supporters to participate in the Canadian Department of Justice Medical Assistance in Dying (MAiD) consultation questionnaire. In my article I stated:

The language of the consultation questionnaire is not great, nonetheless, the questionnaire does allow you to leave further comments.

Alex Schadenberg

On January 15, I published a guide to answering the Canadian MAID euthanasia questionnaire. I am pleased to report that more than 18,000 different people used the guide.

The online consultation is now closed and the Department of Justice has stated that 280,000 Canadians participated in the online consultation. 

Here is my experience with the process.

The online consultation questionnaire was a sham.

Many of the questions implied an outcome. It is a sham to ask people to complete a questionnaire when some of the questions are designed to provide a predetermined outcome.

For instance, Question 2 asked about safeguards. Question 2a asked:

A different reflection period (currently a 10-day reflection period) between the submission of a person’s written request for MAID and receiving MAID.

The answers to this question lacked meaning because they didn't indicate whether it is important to maintain the waiting period, increase the waiting period or remove the waiting period. In other words, the data is useless.

The other (Question 2) safeguard questions assume that the participant supports MAID.

Once again, the only good part of the consultation questionnaire is that it provided a box (500 characters) that enabled the participant to offer their concerns or thoughts.

The online consultation questionnaire was fraudulent.

After encouraging our supporters to participate in the consultation questionnaire, I began to receive emails stating that the website kicked them out as they completed the questionnaire. I simply urged these people to try again.

The second complaint was far more of an issue. Several of our supporters indicated that the consultation website enabled them to complete the questionnaire more than once. One person contacted me stating that he had completed the questionnaire more than 50 times from the same computer.

I did not encourage this nor did I tell others about this problem. I only encouraged our supporters to participate in the questionnaire that was questionable to begin with. 

If one of my supporters completed the questionnaire more than 50 times, how many euthanasia supporters did the same?

The Department of Justice stated that 280,000 people completed the questionnaire. Since the website did not prevent people from participating multiple times they have no idea how many people actually participated and the data collected in the online consultation is unreliable.

If the government wanted to do a proper consultation it would have asked clear questions that were written in a neutral manner and enabled people, who oppose killing, to answer in that manner. 

Since some of the questions implied support for euthanasia many of our supporters refused to participate.

Question 2a concerning the 10 day "reflection period" lacked meaning and is therefore null and void. Based on the online questionnaire, the government cannot conclude that the questionnaire provided data for a policy to: maintain, extend, or remove the waiting period.

EPC asked our supporters to participate in the online consultation questionnaire.

Other than the odd story, the media and the government have ignored the failures of Canada's euthanasia law, even though there are several key problems and abuses of the law.

If you have any comments or concerns, email me at: alex@epcc.ca

For further information please read some of these articles:

• Historical: Canadian Senate passed euthanasia law in time for summer break (Link).
• Approximately 5000 Canadians died by assisted death in 2019 and 13,000 assisted deaths since legalization (Link).
• Ontario euthanasia deaths are rising quickly (Link).
• UN Disability rights envoy urges changes to Canada's euthanasia law (Link).
• Québec court expands euthanasia law by striking down the terminal illness requirement (Link).
• Physically healthy depressed man died by euthanasia in BC (Link).
• Ontario doctor experiences abuse of euthanasia law (Link).
• Québec Fourth Interim Euthanasia Report, 13 deaths did not comply with the law (Link).
• BC Health Minister orders Delta Hospice to do euthanasia by February 3 (Link).

Quebec backtracks on decision to permit euthanasia for mental illness

Alex Schadenberg
Executive Director, Euthanasia Prevention Coalition

I reported, last week, that the Québec government officially decided to extend euthanasia to people with mental illness.

However, Katrina Laframboise with Global News reported that the Québec government is now backtracking on its decision to extend euthanasia to people with mental illness. Laframboise reported:

Health Minister Danielle McCann made the announcement on Monday as a forum on the issue is being held in Montreal, saying the government needs to take more time before expanding the criteria of the law.

“We are taking a pause,” she said...

“We will implement a period of consultations and reflection on this sensitive and complex question,”

Last September, the Québec Superior Court, in the Truchon decision, struck down the requirement that a person be "terminally ill" before qualifying for euthanasia in Canada. 

Since the Quebec and Federal governments did not appeal the decision in Truchon, technically, euthanasia has already been extended to people with psychiatric conditions, as of March 11.

• Quebec court expands euthanasia law by striking down the terminal illness requirement. Euthanasia for psychiatric reasons is next (Link).

The court decision also extended euthanasia to people for psychological reasons. Canada's euthanasia law stated that a person qualifies for euthanasia if the:

illness, disease or disability or that state of decline causes them enduring physical or psychological suffering that is intolerable to them and that cannot be relieved under conditions that they consider acceptable 

Before the Truchon court decision, a person did not qualify for euthanasia based on psychological suffering alone because the law required that the person's "natural death be reasonably forseeable."

Since the court struck down this requirement it means that euthanasia for psychological suffering alone is possible.

Belgian trial draws curtain from dark back-story to euthanasia death

This article was published by Mercatornet on January 27, 2020.

By Michael Cook

The criminal trial of three Belgian doctors for assisting in an allegedly illegal euthanasia of a woman in 2010 is under way. It is the first time that doctors have been charged with an unlawful death since the legalisation of euthanasia in 2002. The accused have been named in the media: the doctor who administered the lethal injection, Joris van Hove; the general practitioner, Frank de Greef; and the psychiatrist, Godelieve Thienpont.

• Three Belgian doctors go on trial in the euthanasia death of a woman diagnosed as autistic (Link).
  

Tine Nys (center) with her sisters.

The parents and two sisters of Tine Nys have succeeded, after nine years of harassing the bureaucracy, in having charges laid. The prosecution alleges that the defendants did not follow the prescribed guidelines for euthanasia in Belgium. Tine was 38 when she died, surrounded by her family, in 2010. The doctors aver that she was suffering from a “serious and incurable disorder”. In her case, it was said to be unbearable psychological suffering.

A few intriguing facts have emerged.

The portrait of Tine Nys grew sadder with the testimony of each witness. She had been estranged from her family for years. She experienced violence in her relationships, she had an abortion, she had worked as a prostitute. “Everything in her life was a failure,” said Dr Thienpont, who diagnosed her as autistic not long before the death. (Dr Thienpont is Belgium's leading psychiatric euthanasia doctor).

The main lawyer for the parents and two sisters of Tine was forced to step down over a clear conflict of interest. The head of Belgium’s euthanasia evaluation commission, Wim Distelmans, revealed that Fernand Keuleneer had been a non-voting member of the commission when her case was examined. It's puzzling how a lawyer could possibly believe that this was acceptable. Mr Keuleneer has since been replaced by another lawyer, Joris Van Cauter.

How the doctors broke the Belgian euthanasia law became clearer. Tine had asked Dr de Greef for a letter authorising euthanasia, but he refused. So she went to LEIF, a euthanasia group which supplies euthanasia doctors, and found Dr van Hove. Dr van Hove dropped by Dr de Greef on the evening of April 27, 2010 at 8pm and asked him to sign a paper. Apparently de Greef misunderstood what he was signing, because he claimed to have been aghast when he learned that Tine had been euthanised shortly after the visit.

This occasioned two breaches of the conditions which shield doctors from prosecution for murder in Belgium. First, Dr van Hove had falsely listed Dr de Greef as the first doctor confirming that Tine was eligible for euthanasia. Second, the paperwork arrived at the euthanasia commission nearly four weeks late.

This worries euthanasia doctors. One told the Belgian newspaper De Morgen, “As a doctor, will you still run the risk of performing euthanasia if you know that with that you run the risk of being prosecuted for premeditated murder? Just because your euthanasia certificate did not arrive at the committee within four days?"

Dr Joris van Hove’s seamy background was highlighted in the media coverage. He has been in court before over offenses like drink driving and forgery. In 2017 he was convicted of molesting young male patients. Was his troubled background the reason why he had turned his hand to euthanasia? (On that fateful evening he had to rush off to do another euthanasia after Tine Nys.) Perhaps more testimony will shed light on this. The Dutch medical council has begun disciplinary proceedings against him.

Dr van Hove admitted that he had never done a euthanasia for psychological suffering before and that he had been clumsy. He had not completed his “end of life” training and he failed to administer the lethal injection properly. He did not have a stand for the infusion and the bag plopped onto Tine’s face as she was saying goodbye to her family. He neglected to bring a blank death certificate. It was like asking Mr Bean to perform euthanasia.

However, Dr van Hove told the court that the euthanasia procedure had been carried out within the law. He protested that the very fact that the case had reached the stage of prosecution was a victory for the “hidden agenda” of the Catholic Church.

The general practitioner, Dr Frank de Greef, painted himself as the victim of a charming but manipulative young woman and her angry relatives. When she was diagnosed as autistic by Dr Thienpont, he was thunderstruck. “When I saw that diagnosis, I thought: What kind of stupid person have I been? Look at its history, everything could be explained by that autism. Tine was engaging and intellectual, but also manipulative and looking for conflict."

The trial continues.

Michael Cook is editor of BioEdge.

Care Not Killing responds to latest call for assisted suicide and euthanasia inquiry

Last week the UK parliament debated a motion to hold an assisted death inquiry. Care Not Killing sent out this media release concerning the call for an inquiry.

Sunday, January 26, 2020

Care Not Killing has responded to the latest call for an inquiry into assisted suicide and euthanasia made in today’s Sunday Express by saying it not necessary or wanted.

Dr Gordon Macdonald, Chief Executive of Care Not Killing, commented: “The inquiry being called for is not necessary, or wanted as MPs, MSPs, Peers, Judges and other elected officials have reviewed, voted on and reviewed the laws more than 30 times since 2003.

Dr. Gordon Macdonald

“On every occasion, they have rejected ripping up long held universal protections, that prevents the terminally ill and disabled people being treated in law because of their physical condition.

“Indeed this was recognised by Chris Philip MP, the Parliamentary Under Secretary of State for Justice who told the House of Commons last week: ‘A number of members have raised the question of a review or a call for evidence. The Government does not have any plans at the moment to initiate any review or any call for evidence because the view being that it is for Parliament to act in this space…it is the position of the Government that it is for Parliament to decide this great issue of conscience. It is not for the Government to lead in this area’.

“Members of Parliament and elected officials on the Isle of Man who debated this issue just last week acknowledged evidence from around the world shows that removing these protections puts vulnerable people at risk of abuse and of coming under pressure, real or perceived, to end their lives prematurely.

“This evidence includes a report from the US National Council on Disability, which made for chill reading. It concluded in were small number of US states that have legalised assisted suicide safeguards were ineffective and oversight of abuse and mistakes was absent

“They also noted the problems in Canada which changed their law in 2016 to allow terminally ill people to request assisted suicide and euthanasia. Since then an estimated 13,000 people have been euthanised or helped to take their own life.

“Parliamentarians saw how laws can quickly be changed by the Courts. In September, the Quebec Superior Court struck down the requirement that a person be terminally ill before they qualify for euthanasia in Canada. It is unclear how far this extension goes, however we have already seen a depressed but otherwise healthy 61-year-old man, given a lethal injection. Alan Nichols, a former school caretaker, who had struggled with mental health problems for many years was admitted to Chilliwack General Hospital and euthanised despite not being terminally ill.

“No wonder not a single doctors group or major disability rights organisation in the UK supports changing the law, including the British Medical Association, the Royal College of General Practitioners, the Royal College of Physicians, the British Geriatric Society and the Association for Palliative Medicine.

“The current laws prohibiting assisted suicide and euthanasia provide a safeguard against abuse and exploitation and do not need changing. They do not need changing.”

For media inquiries, please contact Alistair Thompson on 07970 162225.

Ends

Editors Notes

Care Not Killing is a UK-based alliance bringing together over 40 organisations - human rights and disability rights organisations, health care and palliative care groups, faith-based organisations groups - and thousands of concerned individuals.

We have three key aims:

• to promote more and better palliative care;
• to ensure that existing laws against euthanasia and assisted suicide are not weakened or repealed; 
• to inform public opinion further against any weakening of the law. 

We seek to attract the broadest support among health care professionals, allied health services and others opposed to euthanasia by campaigning on the basis of powerful arguments underpinned by the latest, well-researched and credible evidence.

*As this story is dealing with suicide, please could we ask that you include details about organisations that offer help and support to vulnerable people who might be feeling suicidal such as the Samaritans, CALM or similar organizations.

Pressuring a Hospice to Kill

This article was published by National Review online on January 24, 2020

Wesley Smith

By Wesley J Smith

In Canada, the government threatens to withdraw all funding from a facility that refuses to euthanize dying patients.

*Sign the petition: Hospice Organizations Must NOT be Forced to do Euthanasia (Link).

Should hospice professionals be forced to assist the suicides of their patients who want to die? Not too long ago, the answer to that question would have been an emphatic “Of course not!” Hospice is not about making people dead. Rather, it seeks to help terminally ill patients live well through intensive medical, spiritual, psychological, and social treatments to alleviate the pain and emotional suffering that dying people and their families may experience.

Don’t tell that to the provincial government of British Columbia. After the Supreme Court of Canada conjured a right for anyone diagnosed with a serious medical condition that causes “irremediable suffering” to receive lethal-injection euthanasia, British Columbia decided to require all medical facilities that receive at least 50 percent of their funding from the government to participate in what north of the 49th parallel is known euphemistically as “medical assistance in dying” (MAiD). When Delta Hospice Society, in Delta, British Columbia, announced that it would adhere to the hospice movement’s founding philosophy by banning euthanasia in its facility, the province’s minister of health threatened to cut off all provincial funding. Delta has until February 3 to yield to the euthanasia imperative or face a catastrophic financial crisis.

Delta Hospice

The power of the purse can be very persuasive, but Delta has not surrendered. Instead, searching for a compromise, it has offered to cut from its annual budget, of $3 million (Canadian dollars), $750,000 of the $1.4 million that it currently receives from the province. That would reduce the portion of its budget that comes from public funding to a point below the 50 percent threshold, allowing Delta to continue serving dying patients while maintaining its philosophical integrity. As of this writing, the authorities have not responded to Delta’s offer.

And what if all efforts at obtaining relief fail? While Ireland didn’t say it, one presumes that Delta would close the hospice rather than yield to the government’s orders to kill. Notably, the minister of health seems fine with that prospect.

Of course, this controversy isn’t really about Delta. British Columbia is sending a clarion message to all health-care providers: resistance to the euthanasia imperative is futile. Ireland understands the stakes. “We believe the nation is looking at our situation and [that it] will have a profound impact on other hospices. If the government can coerce us into killing our patients, they can force any hospice into doing it.”

The Delta coercion has ramifications far beyond the hospice sector. Canada is in the process of expanding health categories that qualify for doctor-administered death. Quebec just opened the door to allowing those with mental illness that is deemed “incurable” to receive euthanasia. The country also seems on the verge of requiring that a person diagnosed with progressive dementia be able to sign a legally binding written directive that she be killed when she becomes incapacitated. Also being seriously debated is the legalization of pediatric euthanasia, perhaps without parental permission in the case of “mature children.” Meanwhile, euthanasia and organ-harvesting have already been conjoined in the country — a utilitarian plum to society, celebrated and promoted in the media. If Delta can be compelled to board the euthanasia train, so too can psychiatric institutions, pediatric hospitals, nursing homes, memory-support facilities, and organ-transplant centers.

And it isn’t just medical facilities that are feeling the heat. In Ontario, an ethics rule of the provincial medical association requires doctors to participate in euthanasia, by either doing the deed or finding a doctor who will. A court of appeals has ruled that the requirement is binding, even if it violates a doctor’s religious beliefs. If doctors don’t want to be complicit in euthanasia, the court sniffed, they should either find another career or restrict their practices to such fields as podiatry, in which they won’t be asked to administer death.

What can the United States learn from all this? First, single-payer health care — socialized medicine — allows the government to control the medical profession with an iron fist and harness the sector into advancing controversial social policies. Second, euthanasia is an aggressive social pathogen that brooks no dissent. Once a society widely accepts the underlying premise that killing is an acceptable answer to suffering, access to euthanasia eventually becomes a right that the government must guarantee at the expense of the freedom of conscience of medical practitioners. Finally, access to euthanasia comes to matter more than the ability to assure quality treatment, with the authorities willing to accept a brain drain from the health-care sector rather than allow conscientious objection.

Canada is our closest cultural cousin: We had better be careful, or the same thing could happen here. If we don’t want that, we should reject assisted suicide and focus our national energies on caring instead of killing.

On the face of it, the government’s heavy-handedness makes no logical sense. Everyone acknowledges that Delta provides a very valuable service to the community. And it’s not as if the small hospice, with a mere ten beds, has the power to materially impede access to euthanasia in British Columbia, a province of nearly 5 million people. Indeed, since euthanasia was legalized in 2016, only three Delta patients have asked to be killed — and they were able to obtain their desired end by simply returning home or transferring to a hospital directly next door to the hospice. So, what gives?

Angeline Ireland, president of Delta, perceives a direct connection to socialism. When I asked her in an email interview why she thought the government was trying to force the hospice’s participation, she replied, “I would only be speculating,” but “primarily, I think it is ideological and agenda driven. Our provincial government is currently run by socialists. The Left has never valued human life. In socialized medicine the state controls and is all powerful.” She also believes there is a connection to the costs of health care. “I also wonder how much of it is driven by economics. HPC [hospice palliative care] is far more expensive than euthanasia.”

Delta is a secular facility, so what are its bases for refusing to kill? The administrators merely want the freedom to operate the facility according to the precepts of hospice moral philosophy. “HPC and Euthanasia are diametrically opposed,” Ireland tells me. “Our health-care discipline has been practiced for 40 years in Canada and in that time has excelled in providing pain and symptom-management to people. A patient can be stabilized to live out their life the best way possible. We have seen that people offered Hospice Palliative Care tend not to want euthanasia.”

I asked how Delta’s patients would be affected if the province agreed to cut its support of the hospice by $750,000. She told me that “other programs,” such as “bereavement services” for survivors and “a layer of administration,” would have to be cut until new sources of private or philanthropic funding could be found. But she was adamant that dying patients would not be affected, as Delta will “focus exclusively on our hospice.”

And if the government refuses Delta’s compromise and terminates all financial support? Ireland identified a bitter irony. “Over the last 20 years, we have subsidized the government healthcare system by raising $30 million and giving 750,000 voluntary labor hours directly into community healthcare,” she notes. But she remains adamant: “We will not provide euthanasia. If the government withdraws all its funding, we will try to operate on a privately funded downsized version. We will look for other partners to help us carry on our work.”

Will Delta go to court in that circumstance? Yes. “We have not done anything wrong,” Ireland says. “We have not defaulted on our contract. There is nothing in our contract which obliges us to perform euthanasia or have it provided on our premises.” However, seeking justice is expensive. “We could be on the right side of the law and the right side of history, but it will take $400 an hour to hire a lawyer to seek our remedy. Most not-for-profit organizations don’t have the luxury of standing up against Big Government, who have at their disposal seemingly unlimited legal resources.”