Alberta Seeks to Limit Euthanasia

Jessica Murphy, 

Sareen Habeshian

Alberta has proposed a bill that would limit the use of medically assisted dying - also known as voluntary euthanasia - in the Canadian province solely to end-of-life circumstances.

In 2021, Canada expanded access to medically assisted dying, known domestically by the acronym Maid, to people with serious, incurable illnesses or disabilities, even if their death is not reasonably foreseeable.

Canada is also due to expand access next year to people whose only medical condition is mental illness, though that has twice been delayed.

Alberta is the first jurisdiction in Canada to independently propose limits to the practice.

Alberta Premier Danielle Smith, said during a news conference on Wednesday that Maid should only be an option for those with no hope of recovery.

Canada Euthanized a Record 16,499 Patients

 A record 16,499 people died by euthanasia in Canada in 2024, accounting for 5.1% of all deaths in the country.

According to the latest report on “medical assistance in dying” (MAiD) from Health Canada released at the end of last month, there was a 6.9% increase in state-assisted deaths in Canada in 2024.

In 2024, although assisted suicide is permitted, in which the person who wishes to end their own life self-administers the lethal substance, there was not a single case of assisted suicide. Instead, every single person who died under Canada’s MAiD programme died by euthanasia. In 2023, there were fewer than five instances of assisted suicide.

Canadian Man Offered Euthanasia Multiple Times, 'I Don’t Want to Give up my Life’

By Daniel Payne, original publication, 06 23 24  

Amid ongoing efforts to expand euthanasia in Canada under the name of “medical aid in dying” (MAID), one Ottawa man says he has been offered euthanasia “multiple times” as he struggles with lifelong disabilities and chronic pain from a disease called cerebellar ataxia. 

Roger Foley, 49, [pictured right} shared some of his story in a recent video interview with Amanda Achtman of the Dying to Meet You project, which was created to “humanize our conversation on suffering, death, meaning, and hope.” The project seeks to “[restore] our cultural health when it comes to our experiences of death and dying” through speaking engagements and video campaigns. 

In the video, the fourth of a series, Foley said he has struggled with subpar medical help in his own home, where he is supposed to be getting quality care. Canada has a nationalized health care system but Foley said that individuals with illnesses are “worked at … not worked with.” He spoke out against being devalued as he fights for the support he needs to live.

Coroner Calls Public Inquiry

Quebec's chief coroner has called a public inquest into the death of Normand Meunier [pictured here], the man who used medical aid in dying to end his life after complications during a stay at Saint-Jérôme hospital.

The public inquiry, to be presided over by Coroner Dave Kimpton, was triggered by a request from Public Security Minister François Bonnardel.

According to the Coroner's Office, it will allow "any interested person to express their views concerning the circumstances of this death in order to analyze all the contributing factors, with a view to issuing recommendations to prevent deaths in similar circumstances."

Canada's Life Span Drop

By Alex Schadenberg 

Life expectancy for Canadians has dropped for at least three straight years from 2019 to 2022.

The drop in life expectancy also occurred in the US during Covid, but life expectancy rebounded in the US in 2022, whereas in Canada life expectancy has remained a year lower.

Based on the sheer number of euthanasia deaths in Canada, and the fact that Canadians are not required to be terminally ill in order to be killed by euthanasia, deaths by euthanasia have strongly affected Canada’s death rate resulting in the average Canadian dying one year earlier than in 2019.

Canadian Doctors Admit Covid ‘Booster’ Shot Paralyzed Woman, Offer to Euthanize Her to ‘Make Up for It’

Canadian doctors have admitted that a Covid “booster” shot from Moderna is responsible for a young Ontario woman now being paralyzed for the rest of her life.

37-year-old mother Kayla Pollock is now paralyzed from the neck down after receiving the mRNA injection and says her life has become a “living hell.”

According to a report from The Liberty Daily, however, doctors have offered to “make up for it” by euthanizing the young mom.

This Is Where the ‘Right to Die’ Leads Us

By Alex Schadenberg*

Spiked published an in-depth article by Lauren Smith on January 15, 2024 titled: "Canada has revealed the horror of assisted dying." Smith tells the stories of the many people who have felt forced into  considering death by euthanasia.

Smith sets the stage for her article by calling Canada's euthanasia law a gruesome, state-sanctioned industry. Smith states:

There is nothing remotely civilized about Canada’s medical assistance in dying (MAID) programme. Assisted dying in Canada was initially considered a last resort for terminally ill patients suffering from incurable pain. But in the space of just a few years, euthanasia has been made available to pretty much anyone who is struggling with an illness or a disability. Even Canadians facing homelessness and poverty are feeling compelled to end their lives, rather than ‘burden’ the authorities.

Euthanasia Prevention Coalition Files Brief to Massachusetts Supreme Court in the Kligler Assisted Suicide Case

Alex Schadenberg, Executive Directive, Euthanasia Prevention Coalition, London, Ontario, Canada

In January 2020 the assisted suicide lobby appealed a  Massachusetts Superior court decision which found that there was no right to assisted suicide in Massachusetts. 

Recently the Massachusetts Supreme Court agreed to hear the case and yesterday, EPC-USA submitted a brief in the Massachusetts Supreme Court in this case. 

The case known as Kligler concerns Dr Roger Kligler, who is living with prostate cancer and seeking death by assisted suicide and Dr Alan Schoenberg, who is willing to prescribe lethal drugs for Kligler to die by assisted suicide.  Kligler who claimed to be terminally ill when launching the case in 2016 remains alive today.

Kligler and Schoenberg are arguing that doctors cannot be prosecuted for prescribing lethal drugs for assisted suicide to a competent terminally ill person under the Massachusetts state constitution.

Margaret Dore Speaks at Euthanasia Prevention Coalition Symposium, Speech Highlights

Click here to watch video

Winnipeg Canada, October 27, 2018
Introduction: 

Washington State and Oregon

I am a licensed attorney, or lawyer, whatever term you want to use, in Washington state, USA, where we do have legal assisted suicide. And in the fine print, our bill, and all of the Oregon-style bills, also allow euthanasia. And that's because there’s no requirement of self-administration.  Oregon's law doesn’t even use the word, "self-administer. " [The other side’s claim that it does, is] propaganda.

And Washington's law says “may” self-administer.

Roger Foley Lawsuit Challenges Canada's Euthanasia Law

https://nationalpost.com/news/canada/denied-assisted-life-by-hospital-ontario-man-is-offered-death-instead-lawsuit

An Ontario hospital that wants to discharge a suicidal man with a crippling brain disease threatened to start charging him $1,800 a day, and suggested his other options included medically assisted death [non-voluntary euthanasia], according to a new lawsuit.

It also claims Canada’s new assisted dying laws are unconstitutional and should be struck down because they do not require doctors “to even try to help relieve intolerable suffering” before offering to kill a terminally ill patient.

The scandalous claims, as yet untested in court, are among the first major court challenges to the law, created in 2016 by the federal government in response to a Supreme Court ruling [Carter] that struck down the criminal ban on assisted suicide. ...

Care Home Fined For Declining Euthanasia Request

Belgium Flag

http://www.christian.org.uk/news/care-home-fined-for-declining-euthanasia-request

Judges in Belgium have fined a Roman Catholic care home for refusing to euthanise a 74-year-old woman.

The rest home in Diest was ordered to pay €6,000 after it prevented doctors from giving Mariette Buntjens, a lung cancer sufferer, a lethal injection.

She died “in peaceful surroundings” at her home a few days later. . . .

Labour MP Robert Flello described the judgment as “worrying” and said there is a “risk that care homes will now close across Belgium”.

A panel of three judges ruled unanimously that “the nursing home had no right to refuse euthanasia on the basis of conscientious objection”.

They interpreted Belgium’s euthanasia law, enacted in 2002, to mean that only individual medical professionals can refuse requests, not hospitals or care homes.

To read more, click here.

Expect More From Government

http://www.pentictonwesternnews.com/opinion/letters/385087351.html

Canada’s Parliament has now passed the euthanasia law known as Bill C-14.

From the first day Bill C-14 was introduced in the House of Commons, members from all parties began the work of attempting to make this sow’s ear into a silk purse.

Even in the final days of deliberation, when the bill bounced back and forth between the House and the Senate, a majority of members still held on to the hope that they could get the job done for Canadians and turn this ‘bad’ bill into ‘good’ law.

One last ditch attempt to clean up the mess introduced in Bill C-14 by the Liberal government was the proposal of a protective amendment that would prohibit a beneficiary from participating in a person’s assisted death, or, signing the person’s request for assisted death.

This was a proposal that protected people from a greedy beneficiary or an unscrupulous family member.

But wait, why try to make this bad bill better? Turns out, this protective amendment didn’t ‘fit the bill’ so it was passed without it — by a majority of Parliament. And, why should Parliament at this point, even try to make the legislation better?  Especially when the sweet smell of summer is calling back home and the steaks are sizzling away on the barbeque.

Was the New Mexico Supreme Court Thinking About Canada?

New Mexico Supreme Court

By Margaret Dore, Esq., MBA
Updated July 4, 2016

Yesterday, the New Mexico Supreme Court in a unanimous 5-0 decision held that there is no right to "physician aid in dying," meaning physician-assisted suicide. Notably, the Court stated that to do so would lead to "voluntary or involuntary euthanasia." The decision states:

[W]e agree with the legitimate concern that recognizing a right to physician aid in dying will lead to voluntary or involuntary euthanasia because if it is a right, it must be made available to everyone, even when a duly appointed surrogate makes the decision, and even when the patient is unable to self-administer the life-ending medication. [page 31]

The New Mexico Supreme Court thus describes the situation unfolding in Canada today: first with the Canadian Supreme Court decision in Carter (implicitly finding a right to physician-assisted suicide and euthanasia), and now with news that the BCCLA has launched a court challenge, seeking to expand that "right."

In a recent blog post, Alex Schadenberg, Executive Director of the Euthanasia Prevention Coalition, described the BCCLA challenge this way:

This is the first of many [likely] court challenges to Canada's euthanasia and assisted suicide law. The euthanasia lobby [wants] to extend euthanasia to "mature" minors, to people with dementia (through advanced directives) and for people with psychiatric conditions alone. . . .

Canada is proving the New Mexico Supreme Court right.

BCCLA Launching Legal Case to Expand Euthanasia "Eligibility"

http://alexschadenberg.blogspot.ca/2016/06/first-legal-case-to-expand-euthanasia.html

Alex Schadenberg
Executive Director - Euthanasia Prevention Coalition.

The BC Civil Liberties Association has wasted no time in launching the first legal challenge to Canada's recently passed euthanasia and assisted suicide law.

Globe and Mail reporter Laura Stone informs us that the BC Civil Liberties Association is launching a court case to "strike down" as unconstitutional the provision in the euthanasia law that states a person's "natural death must be reasonably foreseeable" to qualify for death by lethal injection.

Bill C-14, as enacted, media release

Canada's Bill, C-14, which legalized assisted suicide and euthanasia throughout Canada, can be viewed clicking here.

A media release, discussing the bill prior to final amendments, can be viewed by clicking here.

Canada's euthanasia law: Fast tracking death for Canadians who lack health care

https://www.prlog.org/12566593-canadas-euthanasia-law-fast-tracking-death-for-canadians-who-lack-health-care.html

Paul Saba, MD

Canada's euthanasia law which passed on June 17, 2016 will cause may Canadians to die needlessly who have many good years to live and lack quality medical care.

According to Dr. Paul Saba, a family physician in Montreal: "Canadians deserve quality medical care at all times of their lives. This includes having access to a family physician, early screening and detection of illnesses, and the latest treatments and cures. Many Canadians wait a long time for: physicians, specialists, screening, testing and treatments. Canadians' access to specialist and primary care is the lowest among 11 comparable countries. Canada's Parliament has chosen to focus on providing lethal injections rather than providing quality health care for its citizens.

To view the entire press release, click here.

Konrad Yakabuski: "Looking Back on the AIDS Crisis Makes Me Look at Assisted Dying Differently"

To read the entire article, click here

What has troubled me most as Canada moves to legalize physician-assisted death is the fatalism of those, including some senators, who argue for the broadest access possible to the “procedure.”

That’s fine for those who are certain in their choice of death. But who is ever really sure they want to die? Given the options available – intolerable physical or psychological pain, total dependence on others for care – it’s understandable that some would choose to hasten death. The Supreme Court correctly decided that consenting adults in this situation should be able to do so with medical help. But that shouldn’t mean the state should encourage it.

"No" on Bill C-14 and Carter; No Assisted Suicide; No Euthanasia

I was happy to see the CBC article concerning your reluctance to endorse Bill C-14. You are right to be concerned.

Robert-Falcon Oulette, MP

I am a lawyer in Washington State USA where assisted suicide and euthanasia are legal. Bill C-14 and legalization generally will encourage people with years to live to throw away their lives. Carter was wrong. Legalization does not promote the right to life.

Please consider the following reasons:

1.  The bill's title, "medical assistance in dying," implies that eligible people are dying. There is no requirement that people be dying. They are instead required to have a "grievous and irremediable medical condition." See Bill C-14, § 241.2(2).

Assisted suicide opens the door to grave abuses of elderly

http://www.thestar.com/opinion/editorialopinion/article/1287933--assisted-suicide-opens-the-door-to-grave-abuses-of-elderly

Derek Miedema, November 14, 2012

Canadians can watch disturbing videos on a government website warning about elder abuse — an elderly man is pushed to move faster, an adult child steals money from a grandmother’s wallet. 

However, just as some still turn a blind eye to the fact that elder abuse is happening, proponents of assisted suicide refuse to connect the dots between legalized assisted suicide and the potential for serious abuse.

Carter: The Attorney General's Factum

The Attorney General's Factum of the Appellant, filed October 22, 2012, can be viewed by clicking here.