Euthanasia in Canada a 'slippery slope': Concerned Doctors of Ontario

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The federal government in December will be presented with three independent reviews of the much-debated subject of medical assistance in dying (MAID).

The Liberals asked the Council of Canadian Academies to conduct reviews “related to requests from mature minors, advance requests and requests where mental illness is the sole underlying medical condition,” in 2016 when Canada’s MAID legislation was first passed.

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Euthanasia in Canada a 'slippery slope': Concerned Doctors of Ontario Back to video

“It is too early to comment. The reports will be tabled in Parliament no later than Dec. 13,” said Eric Morrissette, spokesman for Health Canada and the Public Health Agency of Canada.

But it’s a Toronto Sick Kids hospital draft policy paper on euthanasia for mature minors — a young person who has not reached adulthood but deemed mature enough to consent to medical care (the current MAID legislation applies to those 18 or older) — that has caught the attention of the group, Concerned Ontario Doctors, and others.

Of particular concern is hospitals contention that there isn’t “a meaningful, practical or ethical difference for the patient between being consensually assisted in dying (in the case of MAID) and being consensually allowed to die (in the case of refusing life-sustaining interventions).”

“So that in itself is fundamentally attacking the very premise of medicine,” said Dr. Kulvinder Gill, a pediatrician, who is the president of COD.

“It is now claiming to state that there is literally no difference between allowing a patient a natural death versus taking an action to cause a death.”

Here’s more of what Gill had to say about the subject:

Q. What concerns you about this discussion with regards to mature minors and euthanasia?

A. Frontline doctors have been kept very much in the dark about this. Most of what we’ve been hearing has been through the media, mostly international media. And many of these new federal laws which are being proposed, both extending euthanasia to children and to those that have mental illness will be putting the most vulnerable patients at risk.

Q. Are some doctors involved in the writing of the Sick Kids hospital draft policy?

A. There are some (palliative) physicians involved, but many of the people who are involved and many of the individuals who are behind most of these panels and policy positions are actually academics or bioethicists.

Q. Do any countries allow pediatric euthanasia?

A. The Netherlands and Belgium and they have parents involved in the process. But this (Sick Kids) policy paper even imagined a scenario where it would happen without the involvement of family which, again, doesn’t exist anywhere else in the world.

Q. Where do you think this is all heading?

A. I think it’s a very scary, slippery slope that we’re going down. Less than a year ago, Ontario became the first jurisdiction in the entire world to have physicians lose their freedom of conscience forcing doctors to either be involved in actually administering MAID or be involved in the effective referral process. In Ontario, five per cent of vulnerable patients account for two-thirds of our public healthcare costs. Our healthcare is in crisis. Rather than seeing needed investments in frontline healthcare for our most vulnerable patients, our governments have plans to expand access to euthanasia.

Q. What scares you the most?

A.We are fundamentally devaluing human life and not giving patients equal access to life-sustaining healthcare or palliative care. We are the only country in the entire world where euthanasia is legal under a single-payer socialized healthcare system and more than 85% of patients in Canada do not have access to palliative care. There is the empty promise of a choice.”