Category: Canada

‘The solution is assisted life’: Offered death, terminally ill Ont. man files lawsuit

CTV News

A landmark lawsuit has been filed by an Ontario man suffering from an incurable neurological disease. He alleges that health officials will not provide him with an assisted home care team of his choosing, instead offering, among other things, medically assisted death.

“My condition is grievous and irremediable,” 42-year-old Roger Foley said from his bed at the London Health Science Centre’s Victoria Hospital in a video that was recently posted online. “But the solution is assisted life with self-directed funding.”

According to Foley, a government-selected home care provider had previously left him in ill health with injuries and food poisoning. Unwilling to continue living at home with the help of that home care provider, and eager to leave the London hospital where he’s been cloistered for two years, Foley is suing the hospital, several health agencies and the attorneys general of Ontario and Canada in the hopes of being given the opportunity to set up a health care team to help him live at home again — a request he claims he has previously been denied. . . [Full Text]

Formal network of docs offering medical assistance in dying is in the works for northeastern Ontario

Informal referral network currently in place with local physicians

CBC News

Angela Gemmill

For those in Sudbury and District seeking a doctor’s help to die, it may soon get a little easier to find one who is trained.

About 40 doctors and nurse practitioners in the region are now trained to offer Medical Assistance in Dying (MAID), after they had specialized training last fall in Sudbury from the Canadian Medical Association.

The Supreme Court of Canada ruled in June, 2016  that medical assistance in dying is a constitutional right, under Bill C-14.

Between then and now, there has only been an informal network for people seeking medically assisted death, said Dr. Paul Preston, Vice President of Clinical for the North East Local Health Integration Network, and an advocate for access for those seeking a doctor’s help with dying. . . [Full text]

 

Euthanasia performed on Canadian prisoner

BioEdge

Michael Cook

A request by a Belgian prisoner for euthanasia made international headlines not too long ago, even though he was not permitted to take advantage of the legislation.

But in a measure of how enthusiastically Canada has embraced euthanasia, one prisoner has already been killed under its Medical Aid in Dying (MAID) law, and three others have been approved. According to a report in CBC News, the death took place in a hospital outside of the prison, under the supervision of two correctional officers.

Correctional Service Canada (CSC) told CBC News that it had, to date, received eight requests for MAID.

CSC is now permitted to organise MAID in a community hospital — but it can also take place in a penitentiary regional hospital or treatment centre in exceptional circumstances and at the request of the inmate.

Correctional Investigator Ivan Zinger criticised the possibility of inmates being euthanised in a prison in a letter to the CSC head:

“Practically and perceptually, I simply can not imagine a scenario where it would be considered acceptable to allow an external provider to carry out a MAID procedure in a federal penitentiary,”

Zinger said that MAID should occur only outside prisons. A prohibition on MAID within prisons would protect the integrity of the system now and in the future, when eligibility for assisted death could expand to prisoners suffering from acute psychiatric illnesses – and in prisons there are a number of these.

Euthanasia performed on Canadian prisonerThis article is published by Michael Cook and BioEdge under a Creative Commons licence. You may republish it or translate it free of charge with attribution for non-commercial purposes following these guidelines. If you teach at a university we ask that your department make a donation to BioEdge. Commercial media must contact BioEdge for permission and fees. Some articles on this site are published under different terms.

Nova Scotia: make a call for conscience

Nova Scotia Call for Conscience 2018

Coalition for HealthCARE and Conscience

Over recent months, it has become increasingly clear that the conscience rights of Nova Scotia doctors are not being adequately protected.

A leading Nova Scotia medical regulator recently told doctors they must participate in euthanasia by making an “effective referral” even if this would require them to violate their conscience. It was made clear that the penalty for refusing to comply could be discipline for “unprofessional conduct”. Performing or referring for assisted suicide and euthanasia involve killing a patient. This is directly opposed to the teachings of many faiths and the traditional Hippocratic oath. Most health care professionals embarked on their careers to heal people, not kill them. No Nova Scotian should be required to be involved against their will.

Other provinces have found ways to provide access without forcing people to act against their moral convictions.

We need to let the Minister of Health of Nova Scotia know that we need legislation to protect conscience rights in our province. In November, Manitoba legislators passed a Bill which said that Manitoba health care professionals could not be compelled to participate in assisted suicide. We need a similar bill here in Nova Scotia. Please write the Minister of Health using the form below. The letter will automatically be sent to the Premier and the leaders of the opposition parties. Conscience rights are an all party issue. We need our legislators to show their support for Nova Scotia health care professionals.

Take action here. Write to the Government of Nova Scotia.

The courts keep inventing new rights, turning our Charter on its head

National Post
Reproduced with permission

John Carpay

If I told you that I wanted to rob a home or store, would you sell me a gun? Presumably not. But what about giving me the name and contact info of another person who is willing to sell me a gun? If you wanted to avoid any participation in my planned robbery, you would refuse to provide a referral.

When it comes to female genital mutilation (the cutting and removal of some or all of a young girl’s external genitalia) the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Ontario (CPSO) recognizes that referring is as bad as providing. The CPSO prohibits this practice, common in many African and Middle Eastern countries. Female genital mutilation causes infection, disease and death in many girls, and life-long health problems for millions of women.

The CPSO policy prohibits physicians from performing, and from referring for, female genital mutilation procedures. Both performing and referring constitute professional misconduct. The reasoning is obvious. If mutilating a girl is wrong, then it’s also wrong to provide a referral for this barbaric procedure.

College of Physicians and Surgeons of Ontario in Toronto, Ont. on Tuesday April 9, 2013.

Sadly, the CPSO abandoned this common-sense approach in the case of Christian Medical and Dental Society vs. CPSO. This court case was about a challenge to the CPSO policy requiring all doctors in Ontario to provide referrals for abortion, assisted suicide, and other medical procedures which some doctors view as harmful to patients and morally wrong. In court the CPSO argued that “a referral is neither an endorsement of the service for which the referral is provided, nor a guarantee that it will be provided.” The CPSO argued that providing a referral is trivial and insignificant, so a doctor would not be violating her conscience when referring a patient for a procedure that the doctor considers harmful. If the CPSO’s courtroom arguments are true, then why prohibit referring for female genital mutilation?

The Ontario Superior Court of Justice ruled that the CPSO policy violates the Charter freedom of religion and conscience, but then justified this violation as necessary to ensure “equitable” access to health-care services.

Abortion and assisted suicide are both legal medical procedures. Plenty of doctors are available to provide the one, the other, or both. Having to ask two, three or more doctors for a particular medical service is inconvenient for patients, to be sure.

But does the Charter provide citizens with a legal right to be free from inconvenience? Beyond a bald declaration, the court provides no explanation as to how or why being inconvenienced is a violation of the Charter. Nor does the court explain why it is necessary to force every single doctor in Ontario to provide referrals for abortion and assisted suicide. In other words, even if many doctors refuse to provide referrals for these services, the public would still have ready access to both.

The purpose of the Charter is to protect citizens from government. For example, the Charter should protect health-care workers (and everyone else) from being pressured or coerced by a government body to do what one believes to be wrong.

Conversely, there is no Charter right to force another human being to provide a service that runs contrary to their conscience. Interactions between citizens should be free from coercion. A patient’s power to compel a doctor to do what the doctor believes to be harmful is as destructive as a doctor’s power to compel a patient to do what the patient believes to be harmful.

The doctors who challenged the CPSO policy were not merely asking the court to be spared an inconvenience. Rather, an Ontario doctor who refuses to violate her conscience risks expulsion from the medical profession.

In upholding the CPSO policy, the court confuses fundamental Charter freedoms with personal interests and desires. The court has dismissed the Charter’s protection from government coercion as less important than a newly invented “right” to compel our fellow citizens (in this case doctors) to do what we want them to do. The court has turned the Charter on its head.

Lawyer John Carpay is president of the Justice Centre for Constitutional Freedoms (Jccf.ca), which intervened in Christian Medical and Dental Society of Canada vs. College of Physicians and Surgeons of Ontario.