Bill C-14: Euthanasia

In this video, André touches on two things:

First, ARPA’s response to the Council of Canadian Academies report on euthanasia, in relation to expanding it to minors, those with mental disabilities, and for advance care directives

Second, the exciting news that ARPA Canada, along with Bethesda Foundation in BC and the Anchor Association in Ontario, have been granted intervenor status in the Lamb Case out of BC. Julia Lamb who has spinal muscular atrophy is challenging Canada’s existing euthanasia law as being too restrictive.

This fall, Parliament will examine the issue of expanding euthanasia to “mature minors” and to persons with mental illness.

Since 2016 (Bill C-14), Canada has permitted anyone who is at least 18, has a grievous and irremediable medical condition, and whose death is reasonably foreseeable, to receive “medical aid in dying” (MAiD). To put it in stark terms, the law now permits medical professionals to kill their adult patients, as long as the patient consents and has the requisite medical conditions.

In Spring 2015, ARPA released its first Assisted Suicide and Euthanasia report, which offered advice to Parliamentarians on responding to the Carter decision. That report was released prior to Bill C-14 (2016). The bill was not as permissive as we feared it might be, but also not nearly as restrictive as we hoped.

ARPA’s 2015 Report focused on properly understanding and responding to the Carter decision. Now, with Canada growing accustomed to euthanasia and amid demands for its expansion, ARPA is releasing a new Report. It articulates and defends the same basic principles: the sanctity of life, the wrong of deliberate killing, and the good of compassionate caring.

Our new Euthanasia & Assisted Suicide Policy Report (Fall 2018) focuses on the shortfalls of Bill C-14 and anticipates new challenges on the horizon. We reiterate, again, the possibility and propriety of prohibiting euthanasia. But we also offer recommendations for incrementally improving the regime created by Bill C-14.

The current law is vague, granting physicians far too much discretion. For example, the standard that a person’s death be “reasonably foreseeable” is terribly imprecise and its interpretation varies from doctor to doctor.

In every jurisdiction that has legalized MAiD, euthanasia and assisted suicide deaths steadily rise. And the rules are interpreted with increasing flexibility over time by doctors, law enforcement, and judges.

Apart from recommending a new, constitutionally compliant prohibition on MAiD, founded on the objective of guarding the sanctity of life, ARPA urges the government to improve the current law by resolving ambiguity and to establishing robust procedural safeguards.

There is a serious push in Canada to expand MAiD in the near future. We must therefore remain persistent in advocating for policy that recognizes the sanctity of God-given life. We must be thoughtful and compassionate when defending the sanctity of human life. We defend this sanctity not only by opposing the killing of the very sick, but by loving them and those near and dear to them.

Please use ARPA’s new report as a personal and community resource for political advocacy. We invite you to write to and speak to your MP on this issue. For many of you, it will not be the first time. May we encourage you with Galatians 6:9, “And let us not grow weary of doing good, for in due season we will reap, if we do not give up.”

Peter Stockland

(Lighthouse News – July 3, 2018) Two years have gone by since the passage of Bill C-14, the law that legalized euthanasia in Canada. Peter Stockland, the publisher of the Cardus Foundation’s “Convivium” magazine, marked the anniversary with an in-depth article on how the law has evolved since it was first implemented. He says it’s clear that the rules around Medical Assistance in Dying (MAiD) continue to be relaxed, as evidenced by some new statistics that came out just last week. “There was a 30-percent increase in the number of medically assisted deaths in the last half of 2017 from the first half.”

But he says what’s particularly interesting is that the Health Canada report on those numbers also looks at why 10% of the requests for MAiD were denied. “90% of requests for medically assisted death have been granted, and Health Canada wants to know why the 10% weren’t granted, and that’s a complete reversal of what the regime was supposed to be. The regime was supposed to be a series of safeguards in which you had to demonstrate that you were eligible (for MAiD), but now it’s been completely turned around. It’s totally upside down.”

Stockland says it’s hard to know if the move to relaxing the eligibility rules for MAiD was a deliberate intent when Bill C-14 was written, but it is clear that the political climate surrounding the drafting of the bill was not favourable toward those seeking to restrict access. He says the government put together a law that they thought would “at least appear to be a compromise, but it wasn’t. In the committee hearings that preceded the bill, it was obvious that the bill had been drafted in such a way that it would placate the voices (asking for more access to euthanasia), because they were just going to keep doing it anyway; people against medically assisted death had lost, and nothing (was) going to stop it.”

Stockland says there is a faint glimmer of hope that the trend can still be reversed, but that would require concerted action on specific cases of euthanasia which are in violation of the original Supreme Court of Canada ruling in the Carter case. “The law is subject to review in 2021, (and) what some people I’ve talked to have said is that there’s a practice that’s going on here that totally disregards even the limited safeguards that are in place. And once those take hold without any kind of prosecution – without any kind of investigation – it becomes almost impossible to rewrite the law.” He says people who are concerned about this need to “turn their attention to saying ‘why is there not a legal investigation going on’ in specific cases that violate the safeguards that were originally put in place.’”

You can listen to the full Lighthouse News broadcast here.

As we conclude our video series “Ending Suffering: The Palliative Alternative”, we revisit the question that we asked at the beginning: What should Christians do now that euthanasia is legal in Canada? You’ve heard from experts, practitioners, and those who have experienced palliative care themselves or through family members. Now it’s your turn to speak up! #endsuffering #betterchoice #palliativecare #compassion