Category: Canada

Delta Hospice Society – Layoffs and Eviction

News Release

Delta Hospice Society

Members of the media are urged to view the attached video that explains why the Delta Hospice Society has been forced to issue layoff notices to all clinical staff prior to our role concluding inside our Hospice effective Feb. 25, 2021. 

The board of DHS deeply regrets being compelled to take this action. Tragically, as the video and the attached background document make clear, we have been left no other choice due to the Fraser Health Authority canceling our service agreement and 35-year lease. Fraser Health is about to evict us and expropriate approximately $15 million of our assets simply because we decline to euthanize our patients at our 10-bed Irene Thomas Hospice in Ladner, B.C.

To be clear, we accept that the provision of MAiD is an elective, legal service across Canada. Nothing in Canadian law, however, requires medically assisted death to be made available everywhere, at all times, to everyone. The Constitution of our private Society and our commitment to palliative care, bars us from offering it. Neither the board of the DHS, nor the vast majority of our patients and members want to change that.

“This is not a debate about MAiD,” says board President Angelina Ireland. “A person who wants MAiD can have it at the hospital right next door to us. This is about the B.C. government destroying a sanctuary for dying patients who want the choice to stay in a palliative care facility where MAiD is not offered. They now find their rights to equal choice being revoked. They are being disenfranchised by the very system they pay for.”

Ireland notes the DHS has been so committed to protecting the right to a sanctuary for the dying that it offered to forego $750,000 in public funding last February in order to operate as an authentic palliative care centre. The Fraser Health Authority rejected the proposal without negotiation. Instead, it served DHS with a one-year notice of eviction with the intent to expropriate its assets.

“The Society has done all it can to have discussions with Fraser Health about the conflict with its Constitution. It has done all it can to follow its service agreement and required legislation. Fraser Health has made no attempt to understand the 30-year relationship with the Society, which has always been recognized for its exemplary care,” says founder and former Executive Director Nancy Macey.

Journalists and the Canadian public at large are urged to recognize where that approach has led: working notice slips for dedicated palliative care employees, and the destruction of a sanctuary for the dying. The Society is dedicated to the future of palliative care and is continuing with its supportive care services such as: bereavement counseling, vigils, spiritual care, volunteer coordination, education, social work and the many other ways it provides care directly to the community.

To arrange interviews, please contact:

Angelina Ireland, President Delta Hospice Society Board,
778-512-8088
irelandangelina@gmail.com

As criteria for medical assistance in dying shifts, calls for more alternatives, support for people who are suffering

 Vancouver Sun

Kristen Holliday

The last time Ray Chwartkowski saw his sister, Cheryl Lowen, was two days before she died in December, 2019.

On that day, he was shocked to learn that her death was scheduled, as she had been approved for medical assistance in dying, often referred to as MAID.

“She never had a diagnosis for any terminal illness,” he said. “I consider her death a total tragedy.”

Chwartkowski, a digital content creator who lives in Vancouver, hasn’t seen Lowen’s official MAID application or assessment paperwork, but he believes his sister should not have been eligible for medical assistance to end her life.

He said Lowen, who was 50 when she died, had a difficult childhood and struggled with physical and mental health problems throughout her life. In mid-2019, she was diagnosed with median arcuate ligament syndrome, a chronic illness that causes severe abdominal pain.

Chwartkowski said he has compassion for her pain but is certain she didn’t meet MAID’s criteria of a reasonably foreseeable death. He also questions her ability to make a well-informed decision after receiving the difficult diagnosis.

“From what I understood, she was refusing to eat, she was refusing immediate medical attention,” said Chwartkowski, adding that she also refused surgery to treat her condition. . . .

. . . Chwartkowski said, to his knowledge, Lowen applied for MAID twice and was denied the first time. . . . continue reading

Lack of support vs. option to die

The London Free Press

Reproduced with permission

Leonie Herx, Ramona Coelho, Sohail Gandhi

Lack of support vs. option to die

As the COVID-19 pandemic dominates the political agenda and strains the country’s health-care systems, the federal Liberals are intent on passing Bill C-7, which proposes to expand medical assistance in dying (MAiD) to those who are not dying.

Proponents say the bill allows choice and dignity for those with chronic illness and disability. However, the bill fails to provide them with the dignity and humanity that comes with good care and access to supports.

We are doctors who witness the struggles that confront our patients and their loved ones every day. Those living on the margins and with disabilities face significant barriers to care though systemic discrimination (ableism) that can make it harder to live a healthy, fulfilling life in community.

As doctors we should be instilling hope, supporting resilience and using our expertise to find creative solutions to address health and well-being. Instead, we would be required to suggest assisted suicide as an option if this bill becomes law.

Spring Hawes, a woman who has had a spinal cord injury for 15 years, said: “As disabled people, we are conditioned to view ourselves as burdensome. We are taught to apologize for our existence, and to be grateful for the tolerance of those around us. We are often shown that our lives are worth less than non-disabled lives. Our lives and our survival depend on our agreeableness.”

A choice to die isn’t a free choice when life depends on good behaviours and compliance to societal norms. Sadly, the medical community can be complicit in this messaging.

Gabrielle Peters, a brilliant writer who has struggled with poverty since her disability, has shared that a health-care professional sat at her bedside and urged her to consider death. This was just after Peters’ partner announced he was leaving her because she was too much of a burden and she no longer fit into the life he wanted.

Doctors can pressure someone to die as in Peters’ situation but also more subtly can confirm a patient’s fears that her life is not worth living and MAiD would indeed be a good medical choice.

Day after day, we participate in a health-care system and a social support system that does not come close to meeting the basic needs of our most vulnerable patients. However, our role as physicians should always be to first advocate that our patients access all reasonable supports for meaningful life with no suffering.

But alas, Canada does not seem to prioritize health care and supports for all, and soon, that lack of support will be pitted against an option to access death in 90 days.

Patients entrust doctors to make ethical decisions every day regarding their care and to make recommendations that are always aimed at promoting health and healing. The core role of medicine is to be restorative, not destructive. Advocating for our patients’ health and well-being is solemn oath we took.

As physicians we help our patients do many things in the context of a trusting, shared decision-making process. Doctors encourage healthy habits. We refuse to prescribe antibiotics when patients have a viral infection, or opioids on demand. We pull a driver’s licence when we have concerns for patient safety and the public good. We refuse to write mask exemptions without good reason. We serve both patient and the common good.

All of this requires courage to not betray the trust society and the patient have bestowed on our profession. Society’s belief in the inherent virtue and ethics of the profession has been the necessary basis of the physician-patient trust. Would you trust your doctor if you thought they didn’t care about your safety and well-being?

While we recognize patients have the right to ask for MAiD, physicians must not be forced to suggest or forced to facilitate this, especially when reasonable options for living with dignity exist. We must continue to offer our patients what is good and practise medicine with integrity.

As Thomas Fung, physician lead for Siksika Nation, a southern Alberta First Nation, said: “Assisted death should be an option of last resort, and not the path of least resistance for the vulnerable and disadvantaged. Conscience protection is needed in this bill, as no one should be forced to participate in the intentional death of another person against their goodwill.”

One of the most important foundations of our Canadian identity is that we are a caring, compassionate country. We are proud of our universal health-care mandate, and we place a high premium on being inclusive and tolerant while working hard toward the accommodation and integration of marginalized and vulnerable members of our community. And yet, if Bill C-7 is allowed to stand without amendments, we will be in serious danger of losing this fundamental element of our Canadian identity.

Ramona Coelho is a family physician in London. Sohail Gandhi is immediate past-president of the Ontario Medical Association. Leonie Herx is division chair and associate professor of palliative medicine at Queen’s University and past-president of the Canadian Society of Palliative Care Physicians. An earlier version of this article appeared in the London Free Press.

Canadian parliament asked to prohibit coercion in euthanasia

Protection of Conscience Project proposes amendment to euthanasia/assisted suicide bill

News Release

Protection of Conscience Project

The Protection of Conscience Project is asking the Parliament of Canada to make it a crime to force people to become parties to euthanasia and assisted suicide.

The Project has proposed an amendment to Bill C-7, a pending euthanasia/assisted suicide bill. The amendment would establish that, as a matter of law and national public policy, no one can be compelled to become a party to homicide or suicide, or punished or disadvantaged for refusing to do so.

The proposed amendment would not prevent the provision of euthanasia or assisted suicide by willing practitioners, nor rational arguments aimed at persuading practitioners to participate, nor the offer of incentives to encourage participation. However, it would prevent state institutions or anyone else from attempting to force unwilling citizens to be parties to killing someone or aiding in suicide.

The need for the amendment is demonstrated by policies in Ontario, Nova Scotia, New Brunswick and Manitoba that compel health care workers to become parties to inflicting death upon patients. Further, Bill C-7 will increase demands that they participate in euthanasia and assisted suicide in increasingly controversial cases, since it will formally legalize euthanasia and assisted suicide for people who are disabled but not dying, and for those who lose the capacity to consent after having arranged for the procedures but before they have been provided.

Parliament has used its criminal law power to prohibit procedures that might be asked of health care workers, like female genital mutilation, and the government plans to prohibit some forms of “conversion therapy.”

“It is clear that the federal government can make it a crime to force people to become parties to homicide and suicide,” said Sean Murphy, Administrator of the Protection of Conscience Project.

“The Project hopes that Liberal, Conservative, Bloc, Green and Independent parliamentarians can agree that,whatever one might think about euthanasia and assisted suicide, it is unacceptable to compel unwilling Canadians to become parties to killing other people.”

Contact: Sean Murphy, Administrator
Protection of Conscience Project
protection@consciencelaws.org

Physician  freedom of conscience in Saskatchewan

Sean Murphy*

Abstract

Physician Assisted Dying adequately accommodates both physician freedom of conscience and patients’ access to services. It demonstrates that the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Saskatchewan could have taken the same approach to freedom of conscience in relation to other procedures and produced a satisfactory policy on conscientious objection.

Conscientious Objection is ambiguous with respect to effective referral and polemical in its treatment of a physician’s traditional obligation to render assistance in an emergency. It demonstrates the authors’ intention to suppress physician freedom of conscience by compelling them to provide or facilitate morally contested procedures, as well as the intricate wordplay necessary to achieve that end. . . [Full text]