The B.C. Catholic is appealing to B.C.’s Office of the Information and Privacy Commission in a bid to obtain documents from the Fraser Health Authority that may shed light on its board of directors’ role in the development and implementation of the health body’s controversial assisted-suicide policies.

The B.C Catholic launched a freedom-of-information request for these and other documents more than a year ago after hearing complaints that some FHA personnel were harassing vulnerable, elderly patients about the availability of “medical assistance in dying.”

Fraser Health policy documents released earlier this year in response to the B.C. Catholic’s FOI request revealed that the accessing of assisted suicide in the health authority’s facilities is supposed to be an “entirely patient-driven” process.

Fraser Health officials, including most recently Dr. Grace Park, regional medical director responsible for MAiD, have not answered repeated questions about the apparent discrepancy between the authority’s policy and reported accounts to the contrary.

The B.C. Catholic’s attempt to shed more light on the issue by accessing board documents was rejected. Harpreet Lalli of the authority’s freedom of information office said in a March 24 email that the office would not release any board agendas, reports, or minutes because “the records that you requested consist of in-camera Board of  Directors meeting minutes and related records.”

Lalli justified the request’s denial by saying B.C.’s Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act allows public bodies to withhold such information “in order to facilitate full and frank discussion of policy issues within the public service.”

John Hof, a leading Catholic pro-life advocate, said in an interview with the B.C. Catholic that a public body such as the Fraser Health board should not have held secret meetings related to such an important issue. “It’s absurd,” Hof said. “What have they got to hide?”

He noted that recent debate in Parliament over new assisted-suicide legislation (Bill C-7) took place entirely in public, “and that’s where the Fraser Health’s board should have been discussing this as well. The fact they hid behind closed doors is most troubling.”

Board-governance expert Grant MacDonald, a retired Dalhousie University professor, has written that closed or in-camera meetings should be used “only in extraordinary circumstances” in order to avoid the development of an unhealthy culture of secrecy. Nevertheless, he wrote in an article published on the Governing Good website, that in-camera sessions seem to have become “ubiquitous” among hospital boards.

Dr. Jim Lane, president of the Catholic Physicians Guild of Greater Vancouver, said in an interview that he couldn’t comment on the board’s role in Fraser Health’s implementation of assisted-suicide policies, but is concerned about reports that patients are feeling pressured to accept MAiD.

“Sadly, it’s entirely predictable, though,” Lane said. “Once the door was opened to assisted suicide, it was always going to expand. There aren’t safeguards in place to protect vulnerable people from being coerced – whether by doctors, nurses, family members, society at large, or the media. It’s scary that people won’t have the safeguards.”

The B.C. Catholic filed an appeal of Fraser Health’s rejection of the FOI request to the information and privacy commission March 30. The office answered that the appeal process currently “takes at least two to three months” to complete.