Tag: Quebec

Barrette chastises MUHC over policy not to provide medically assisted death

Montreal Gazette

Caroline Plante

QUEBEC — The McGill University Health Centre is being forced to backtrack on a policy that exempts its palliative care unit from helping patients die.

Health Minister Gaétan Barrette issued a strongly worded letter to the MUHC’s director general Wednesday, urging him to change the policy, which he says does not respect the law.

“To say that medical aid to die will not be offered in a particular unit … poses a serious problem when it comes to respecting patients’ lawful right to receive end-of-life care,” the minister wrote. . . [Full text]

MUHC to allow medically assisted dying in palliative care unit

Montreal Gazette

John Meagher

The McGill University Health Centre said Monday it will change its policy and allow medically assisted dying in its palliative care unit after coming under fire from Health Minister Gaétan Barrette last week.

The uproar came about after a patient at the Glen site had to be transferred out of the palliative care unit to receive medical aid in dying in April.

Barrette sent a letter to the MUHC’s director general last week, asking the hospital network to change its policy, because it does not respect the new law. . . [Full text]

Ontario hospitals allowed to opt out of assisted dying, raising conscientious accommodation concerns

National Post

Sharon Kirkey

Ontario will allow hospitals to opt out of providing assisted death within their walls, provoking charges from ethicists that conscientious accommodation has gone too far.

Elsewhere in the country, a divide is already shaping up, with half of voluntary euthanasia cases in Quebec reportedly occurring in Quebec City hospitals — and few in Montreal.

The situation highlights the messy state of the emotionally charged debate as the provinces wrestle with the new reality of doctor-assisted death, and as the Senate takes a proposed new law further than the governing Liberals are prepared to go. . . [Full Text]

 

Let’s not become Belgium when it comes to assisted suicide

Imagine . . .  being the first hospital in human history to be closed for refusing to kill patients in its care.

National Post

Barbara Kay

In February, the archbishop of Edmonton announced that in the event of legalized euthanasia, physicians and other health-care workers of Covenant Health Hospital would not be participating in the active termination of patients’ lives.

In response last month, Alberta’s associate health minister Brandy Payne stated that Covenant Health’s conscientious objection would be respected, and that patients requesting life termination there would be transferred. That seems reasonable. After all, when conscripted soldiers refuse to go to war for reasons of conscience, they are not asked to provide their own combat replacement.

In Quebec, by contrast, where euthanasia is already in effect, any Christian institution that refuses to comply with the legislation will be shut down. (Imagine the dubious distinction of being the first hospital in human history to be closed for refusing to kill patients in its care.)

Ethics-based tension in the medical community is but one of many concerns we must acknowledge to be inherent in Bill C-14. . . [Full  Text]

 

The intersection of freedom of conscience and assisted dying

One MP’s views on balancing the needs of patients and doctors who have personal issues providing assisted dying

Macleans

Garnett Genuis

Garnett Genuis, the Conservative MP for Sherwood Park—Fort Saskatchewan in Alberta, has served on the Physician-Assisted Dying Committee.

Parliament will imminently be dealing again with the issue of physician-assisted suicide / euthanasia. If government legislation follows the direction given in the report of the Liberal-dominated joint committee, we are in for (among other things) a significant change in the way Canadian law treats freedom of conscience.

The court was clear in Carter that nothing in their decision would require anyone to be involved in euthanasia or assisted suicide if they did not wish to be. In this respect, I think the court got it right. Freedom of conscience is protected by the Charter itself. Euthanasia and assisted suicide were considered murder until just this year; it’s understandable that many healthcare providers remain uncomfortable with it. . . [Full text]