Dr. Jillian Demontigny keeps a rainbow bracelet wrapped around the stethoscope that she drapes across her neck. It’s her signal to any LGBTQ patient who arrives at her clinic: you are welcome here.
Dr. Demontigny is one of 13 physicians working at the Taber Clinic, a family medicine clinic in a southern Alberta town of 8,500 people. Over her 14 years in Taber, she has expanded her practice to offer extra supports for patients looking for the kind of health care that can be hard to access in this rural, conservative region, where anti-abortion billboards are posted along the highway. . . [Full text]
Hospice begs permission to refuse $750,000 in state funding
Euthanasia and assisted suicide available in state hospital next door
News Release
Delta Hospice Society
Vancouver area hospice is asking
the government to reconsider their proposal to give up $750,000 a year
in funding so that it not be required to violate its mandate of care and
compassion for patients by providing Medical Assistance in Dying (MAiD)
at its facility.
The health authority’s demand is unnecessary, the hospice contends, noting that the MAiD option is widely available at many other facilities, including one next door.
By forfeiting the government funding, the hospice would be under the 50% threshold set by the government and therefore exempt from providing MAiD.
Angelina Ireland, President of the Delta Hospice Society, said that the Society’s Charter specifically mandates it to provide compassionate care and support for persons in the last stages of living, so that they may live as fully and comfortably as possible.
“Helping and supporting patients to live fully and comfortably in
their last days and giving support to them and their families is what
our patients and families come to us for and expect and it is certainly
what our staff are dedicated to providing. Taking steps to end a
patient’s life is not providing care and support so that ‘they may live
fully.’”
Fraser Health Authority ordered the Delta Hospice Society late last
year to provide Medical Assistance in Dying (MAiD) claiming that failure
to do so would be a breach of the Society’s agreement with the
authority.
Ireland said in order to comply with the Authority’s instruction it
would have to violate its legal commitments under the province’s
Societies’ Act which requires them to follow their Charter. Further, DHS
is not in breach of the Agreement. There is nothing in the Agreement
which requires DHS to provide MAiD or allow it to be provided on its
premises. The FHA is attempting to amend the Agreement by making a
unilateral decision to impose an obligation, which in itself would be a
contravention of the Agreement. The Fraser Health Authority’s new
directive puts the Hospice Society in a difficult position of either
honouring their Charter and legal obligations or acceding to what she
called “an agenda-driven demand which ignores ourprimary function and
pays no heed to the needs or wants of those patients and families we are
caring for.”
The Delta Hospice Society has tried to work with the health
authority, explaining the dilemma the order places upon them, outlining
their function to assist patients live fully in their final days before
natural death, and offering options to help settle the dispute but the
Fraser Health Authority has refused to budge.
On January 15, 2020, Delta Hospice Society wrote the Fraser Health
Authority to ask that they reconsider the proposal to give up the
$750,000 a year in funding so that they may benefit from the exemption
set out in a Ministry of Health policy.
Ireland said that giving up the funding would cause the Society to focus exclusively on their Hospice operations. The other services the Society provides to the community would be put on the back burner until alternative funding partnerships can be established. The Society is committed to continuing to provide the quality care it has provided since its founding in 1991, and protecting the Society’s mandate and organizational integrity.
Ireland noted further that there are many locations where MAiD is already available to those wishing to avail themselves of that option, including a facility next door.
“Nobody wanting such a service would be prevented access. The issue
is not accessibility. It seems to be a purely agenda-driven demand that
runs rough shod over both Delta Hospice Society’s desire to live up to
its legal requirements under our Charter, as well as ignoring the
reality that we are dealing with patients and families in a very
vulnerable and delicate position.”
“Our goal,” she added, “is to fulfill our mission. And that is to help patients and their loved ones live quietly, comfortably, and as fully as possible in their final days of life.”
She reiterated the hospice’s desire to negotiate an equitable arrangement with the Fraser Health Authority to maintain Delta Hospice’s role of serving its patients well.
The Fraser Health Authority has given the Delta Hospice Society a deadline to agree to provide medically assisted deaths.
The new board of the society has been on a collision course with the health region after reversing a decision by the previous board to not allow Medical Assistance in Dying (MAiD) at the Irene Thomas Hospice in Ladner.
A spokesperson with the region yesterday told the Optimist that the FHA “reached out again to the Delta Hospice Society to share our expectations that they comply to permit medical assistance in dying by February 3, 2020.” . . . [Full text]
Euthanasia is more than just legal in Canada. It has become a government-guaranteed right.
But how to guarantee that the legally qualified who want to die are made dead? Unless the government establishes killing centers out of Soylent Green, it will have to coerce doctors to do the killing or procure the euthanasia doctor -called “effective referral” — as has been done in Ontario. And, it will have to force medical facilities into allowing euthanasia on premises, whether their administators like it or not.
Such an imposition is now taking place in British Columbia, where the Delta Hospice board of directors are standing tall for the hospice philosophy of caring — but never killing — by refusing to permit euthanasia in the facililty. In response, the BC Health Minister is threatening to restrict funding in the single-payer system, which, ironically, would undercut the facilities ability to care optimally for their patients who don’t want to be killed. From the Globe and Mail story:
A B.C. hospice society that refuses to provide medical assistance in dying at its facility in violation of local rules has been given until Thursday to submit plans for compliance.
Health Minister Adrian Dix said the Delta Hospice Society, which operates the Irene Thomas Hospice in Ladner, may face penalties if it fails to do so.
“We’ve asked them … to provide their plan to fulfill their contract with the Fraser Health Authority and it is our expectation that they will,” Mr. Dix said on Wednesday. “Should they not want to fulfill their contract with Fraser Health, there may well be consequences of that.”
It it my understanding that there is a Fraser hospital directly across the street from the hospice where patients are euthanized. It would be easy to move hospice patients who want to have that done to the hospital where they could be put down according to their desire. But even if that weren’t true, so long as the hospice advises patients that euthanasia is not permitted on site, why force the issue? Why threaten to bring financial ruin upon a small, heterodox-managed institution?
Because of the message that Delta sendsthat euthanasia is morally wrong and an improper way to treat terminally ill patients. That is what burns. Hence, the authoritarian response of the government.
This is both a civil rights issue and a matter of basic compassion. Think about the patient in the next bed who values life and knows that his neighbor is being killed by a doctor. That would be both terrifying and morale destroying because of the cruel message communicated that his life — like that of the neighbor — is no longer deemed worth protecting.
The ongoing assault on medical conscience in Canada demonstrates how the culture of death brooks no dissent. The same thing will happen here if we let the wolf in the door. Those with eyes to see, let them see.
Vatican City, Dec 16, 2019 / 05:06 pm (CNA).- A priest must say clearly to a person opting for assisted suicide or voluntary euthanasia that he is committing a grave sin, a Dutch cardinal told CNA this week.
For the same reason, a priest cannot be present when voluntary euthanasia or assisted suicide is performed. This might imply that the priest has no problems with the decision or even that “these morally illicit acts are not such in some circumstances according to the teaching of the Church,” Cardinal Willelm Eijk, Archbishop of Utrecht and an expert on euthanasia issues, told CNA. . . [Full text]
