This story has been updated to include comments from Archbishop Miller and Father Larry Lynn.

Vancouver Archbishop J. Michael Miller is among assisted suicide opponents calling on Canadians to participate in the federal government’s consultation on expanding euthanasia.

Archbishop Miller Tuesday urged the faithful to complete the federal government’s survey on assisted suicide before next Mondays deadline.

“We have a very short timeframe for letting the government know its priority should be more palliative and hospice care, not expanding the categories for killing people who feel they have no other options,” Archbishop Miller said in a statement.

“I ask all Catholics and people of good will to take part in this consultation and let Ottawa know we strenuously oppose any increase in killing, which has already reached appalling levels.”

The public consultation was launched by the government Jan. 13 and is primarily being conducted through an online public survey at justice.gc.ca/eng/cons/ad-am. Canadians can give their views on the laws applying to state-sanctioned suicide by the end of day Jan. 27. 

But that deadline is too short for such an important deliberation, said John Hof, former president of United for Life B.C.

“I can see no need to hasten this process,” he told The B.C. Catholic. “Decisions made by this government will be a part of our laws for a very long time, which is why we should be taking all the time we can to make sure we don’t get it wrong.”

Hof and other pro-life voices are urging Canadians to take part in the consultation, saying any move to expand euthanasia is proof of the slippery slope they have long predicted is coming.

“After receiving countless guarantees during the discussion of assisted suicide legislation that access would not be expanded, we now see immediate challenges to that legislation.”

The rush to make changes to Canada’s assisted-death laws is a response to a Quebec court decision in September 2019 that ruled the “reasonable foreseeability of natural death” criteria in the federal law and the “end-of-life” criteria in Quebec’s provincial law on medical assistance in dying (MAID) was unconstitutional because those rules are too restrictive.

“The Court’s ruling will come into effect on March 11, 2020, unless an extension is granted by the Court. While this ruling only applies in the province of Quebec, the Government of Canada has accepted the ruling and has committed to changing the MAID law for the whole country,” a federal justice department statement said.

When the federal government first brought in regulations surrounding assisted-dying in 2016, Ottawa promised a larger review of the MAID system after five years, primarily focusing on “three complex issues including requests for MAID by mature minors, advance requests, and requests for people where mental illness is the only reason for requesting MAID.”

The justice department said updating Canada’s MAID law “will expand eligibility for MAID beyond people who are nearing the end of life and could possibly result in other changes once the review is complete.”

Federal Justice Minister David Lametti, who voted against his own government’s original MAID regulations because he felt they were too restrictive a point the Quebec court decision agreed with said in a statement that he understands “medical assistance in dying is a profoundly complex and personal issue for many Canadians.”

“The consultations we are launching today will allow us to hear directly from Canadians and guide the path forward,” Lametti said.

Hof said warnings about an inevitable expansion of assisted suicide “were obviously not heeded. The vulnerable and helpless in our nation are at greater risk of being bullied to death with the expansion of MAID. A society that abandons their most dependent citizens is one on the road to self-destruction.”

Some parishes in the archdiocese have begun active campaigns to encourage parishioners to answer the survey.

Father Larry Lynn, pro-life chaplain for the Archdiocese of Vancouver, says there has been a “slow awakening” among local Catholics, but lately he's been “inundated” with emails about the government survey, giving him the sense “that the urgency of the situation has galvanized people into action.”

“We have no right to be deciding who we can kill and who we can't based on criteria that is not unlike applying for your driver’s licence. The point is there is no legitimate criteria for the taking of innocent human life,” Father Lynn said.

“What are we going to allow?” asked Alex Schadenberg, the executive director of the Euthanasia Prevention Coalition, adding his organization is worried that minors and people with mental disabilities will eventually be eligible for assisted death as has happened in other jurisdictions where legally-sanctioned suicide has been allowed.

Schadenberg has compiled a guide to answering the questionnaire with suggested responses at https://alexschadenberg.blogspot.com/2020/01/guide-to-answering-canadian-maid.html.

Opponents of assisted suicide, such as churches and pro-life groups, argue that much more support is needed for palliative care and hospice options to help people at the end of life without resorting to suicide as a way to speed up their natural death.

The Euthanasia Prevention Coalition’s Schadenberg said Canadian hospices are concerned that the end-of-life care they provide is being tangled up in the MAID debate.

In Ladner, the Delta Hospice Society is facing pressure from the Fraser Health Authority to offer assisted suicide to its patients, contrary to the society’s constitution.

The Canadian Hospice Palliative Care Association and the Canadian Association of Palliative Care Physicians recently issued a statement saying hospice palliative care organizations are in agreement that assisted suicide is not part of hospice and palliative care.

Hof said the push to expand assisted suicide demonstrates the wisdom of the saying “hard cases make bad law.”

Exceptional cases like the one in Quebec “will lead to an open-door policy of MAID being available for anyone who asks for it, and even for those who do not but are deemed to be eligible by others without prior consent,” said Hof.

The Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops in 2018 called for a national consultation on assisted suicide and urged the government to keep euthanasia out of any provision of palliative care.

With files from Canadian Catholic News


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