TORONTO (CNA) — Catholic officials across Canada are denouncing the removal of safeguards for euthanasia and calling for improved access to palliative care across the country.
In an op-ed published March 2, Toronto Cardinal Thomas Collins condemned proposed changes to the Medical Assistance in Dying (MAiD) laws, saying the country is embracing “death on demand” in its healthcare laws.
Cardinal Collins used the column in The Toronto Star to denounce Bill C-7, which would remove safeguards and expand eligibility criteria for MAiD. The bill was introduced in the House of Commons last week and, if passed, will create advance directives to allow patients to authorize euthanasia in advance and permit those who do not have a terminal illness to receive a physician-administered death.
“Pain medication and other resources and procedures can indeed be used effectively to medically assist people who are dying,” said Cardinal Collins. “But that is not what MAiD involves: it means giving a lethal injection to people who are not dying, so that they will die.”
“Under this legislation, any serious incurable illness, disease, or disability would render a person eligible for euthanasia,” said the cardinal.
Bill C-7 would also remove a 10-day waiting period between being approved for an assisted death and receiving the drugs for those who have a condition that would cause a “reasonably foreseeable” death.
“This is a new chapter of death on demand,” he said. “Canada has cast aside restrictions at a far quicker pace than any other jurisdiction in the world that has legalized euthanasia.”
When assisted suicide first became law in 2016, Ottawa promised to do a “thorough” review prior to introducing new legislation. This did not happen, said Cardinal Collins. Bill C-7 was introduced in response to a September 2019 Quebec Superior Court decision that found the “reasonably foreseeable death” stipulation was a violation of human rights. The Canadian government said it would not appeal that decision.
Cardinal Collins also decried the lack of widely-available palliative care services and questioned why there was no “political will to push forward on palliative care for all Canadians.”
About a third of Canadians have access to palliative care, but medically assisted deaths are guaranteed, widely available, and fully-funded under the law.
“If all Canadians had access to quality palliative care, fewer would seek lethal injection. Instead of developing an overall culture of care, we are rushing towards death on demand,” said the cardinal. “The same doctors who are trying to care for their patients will now be called on to approve euthanasia for them.”
Doctors are able to refuse to administer an assisted death, but must refer patients to a willing physician.
The sick, elderly, and disabled “need assisted living, not assisted death,” said Cardinal Collins. “They should never be seen as a burden to our society.” He wrote that he is worried that these vulnerable populations, having suddenly become eligible for assisted death, “may well be pressured, whether from family, friends or even their own health care professionals, to ‘ease their burden’ and end their lives.”
To combat this mentality, Collins wrote, it is imperative for Canadians to “foster a culture of care and love for one another” and strive to accompany friends, family “and even strangers…recognizing the inherent dignity of every person.”
The Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops issued a statement Feb. 26 expressing “the greatest concern and dismay” over Bill C-7, saying it puts in jeopardy those who sign advance directives but change their minds at a later date. “If their ability to communicate has since been impaired (they) would be left to express their refusal in potentially vague “words, sounds, and gestures,” said the statement, citing the language of the proposed legislation.
The CCCB said the government is ignoring the concerns of more than 65 disability advocate organizations in Canada and the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities and is “imprudently moving forward to amend the Criminal Code to accommodate the (Quebec) Superior Court’s ruling.”
The bishops also condemned the government’s consultation on the existing law, calling it a “highly questionable, biased, and rushed online survey” over two weeks in January. The survey questions “presupposed agreement with euthanasia and assisted suicide, including its broadening, without giving Canadians who are opposed an equal voice.”
The statement also said the survey, which received nearly 300,000 responses, “regrettably did not ask for detailed and essential demographic data from participants (age, gender, ethnicity, disability, etc.), hence, the online survey cannot purport to represent a ‘wide spectrum’ of the Canadian population, as has been claimed.
The “flawed” online survey also excluded households without internet, those living in remote communities, the elderly, as well as those with seeing, cognitive and mobility impairments, while “roundtable consultations” in January and February excluded some major stakeholders.
“The Government has effectively short-circuited the mandatory assessment of euthanasia and assisted suicide in Canada as provided in the original Act of 17 June 2016 to amend the Criminal Code, which specifically called for ‘a parliamentary review of [the Act’s] provisions and of the state of palliative care in Canada to commence at the start of the fifth year following the day on which [the Act] receives Royal Assent.’”
The bishops reminded the government of the World Medical Association’s long-standing policy of opposition to euthanasia and physician-assisted suicide and called on the government to refer Bill C-7 to a committee for detailed examination before Second Reading to hear from expert witnesses and a wide range of voices.
The statement closed with a call for Canadians to make their voices heard and members of Parliament to “acknowledge the giftedness of life as an inalienable right not to be taken away by others, the importance of compassion for the ill and the dying, as well as our responsibility to protect the most vulnerable among us.”
With B.C. Catholic files.
