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Assisted suicide activists should not be running our MAID program

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6 minute read

From the MacDonald Laurier Institute

By Shawn Whatley

We should keep the right-to-die foxes out of the regulatory henhouse

The federal government chose a right-to-die advocacy group to help implement its medical assistance in dying legislation. It’s a classic case of regulatory capture, otherwise known as letting the foxes guard the henhouse.

In the “Fourth annual report on Medical Assistance in Dying in Canada 2022,” the federal government devoted several paragraphs of praising to the Canadian Association of MAID Assessors and Providers (CAMAP).

“Since its inception in 2017, (CAMAP) has been and continues to be an important venue for information sharing among health-care professionals and other stakeholders involved in MAID,” reads the report.

With $3.3 million in federal funding, “CAMAP has been integral in creating a MAID assessor/provider community of practice, hosts an annual conference to discuss emerging issues related to the delivery of MAID and has developed several guidance materials for health-care professionals.”

Six clinicians in British Columbia formed CAMAP, a national non-profit association, in October 2016. These six right-to-die advocates published clinical guidelines for MAID in 2017, without seriously consulting other physician organizations.

The guidelines educate clinicians on their “professional obligation to (bring) up MAID as a care option for patients, when it is medically relevant and they are likely eligible for MAID.” CAMAP’s guidelines apply to Canada’s 96,000 physicians312,000 nurses and the broader health-care workforce of two-million Canadians, wherever patients are involved.

The rise of CAMAP overlaps with right-to-die advocacy work in Canada. According to Sandra Martin, writing in the Globe and Mail, CAMAP “follow(ed) in the steps of Dying with Dignity,” an advocacy organization started in the 1980s, and “became both a public voice and a de facto tutoring service for doctors, organizing information-swapping and self-help sessions for members.”

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau tapped this “tutoring service” to lead the MAID program. CAMAP appears to follow the steps of Dying with Dignity, because the same people lead both groups. For example, Shanaaz Gokool, a current director of CAMAPserved as CEO of Dying with Dignity from 2016 to 2019.

A founding member and current chair of the board of directors of CAMAP is also a member of Dying with Dignity’s clinician advisory council. One of the advisory council’s co-chairs is also a member of Dying with Dignity’s board of directors, as well as a moderator of the CAMAP MAID Providers Forum. The other advisory council co-chair served on both the boards of CAMAP and Dying with Dignity at the same time.

Overlap between CAMAP and Dying with Dignity includes CAMAP founders, board members (past and present), moderators, research directors and more, showing that a small right-to-die advocacy group birthed a tiny clinical group, which now leads the MAID agenda in Canada. This is a problem because it means that a small group of activists exert outsized control over a program that has serious implications for many Canadians.

George Stigler, a Noble-winning economist, described regulatory capture in the 1960s, showing how government agencies can be captured to serve special interests.

Instead of serving citizens, focused interests can shape governments to serve narrow and select ends. Pharmaceutical companies work hard to write the rules that regulate their industry. Doctors demand government regulations — couched in the name of patient safety — to decrease competition. The list is endless.

Debates about social issues can blind us to basic governance. Anyone who criticizes MAID governance is seen as being opposed to assisted death and is shut out of the debate. At the same time, the world is watching Canada and trying to figure out what is going on with MAID and why we are so different than other jurisdictions offering assisted suicide.

Canada moved from physician assisted suicide being illegal to becoming a world leader in organ donation after assisted death in the space of just six years.

In 2021, Quebec surpassed the Netherlands to lead the world in per capita deaths by assisted suicide, with 5.1 per cent of deaths due to MAID in Quebec, 4.8 per cent in the Netherlands and 2.3 per cent in Belgium. In 2022, Canada extended its lead: MAID now represents 4.1 per cent of all deaths in Canada.

How did this happen so fast? Some point to patients choosing MAID instead of facing Canada’s world-famous wait times for care. Others note a lack of social services. No doubt many factors fuel our passion for MAID, but none of these fully explain the phenomenon. In truth, Canada became world-famous for euthanasia and physician-assisted suicide because we put right-to-die advocates in charge of assisted death.

Regardless of one’s stance on MAID, regulatory capture is a well-known form of corruption. We should expect governments to avoid obvious conflicts of interest. Assuming Canadians want robust and ready access to MAID (which might itself assume too much), at least we should keep the right-to-die foxes out of the regulatory henhouse.

Shawn Whatley is a physician, a Munk senior fellow with the Macdonald-Laurier Institute and author of “When Politics Comes Before Patients: Why and How Canadian Medicare is Failing.”

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RCMP veterans’ group promotes euthanasia presentation to members

Published on

From LifeSiteNews

By Clare Marie Merkowsky

The Nova Scotia RCMP Veterans Association encouraged members, many of whom suffer from PTSD, to attend a presentation by a euthanasia practitioner, and one veteran with cancer was personally invited.

A Nova Scotia police veterans’ group has been exposed for advertising euthanasia to its members.

In a November 20 email leaked to CAF veteran Kelsi Sheren, the Nova Scotia branch of the RCMP Veterans Association encouraged veterans to attend a presentation on so-called “medical assistance in dying” (MAID), in the latest move to push death on Canadian veterans.

“I served for 32 years on the West Coast and retired in 2019,” the RCMP member who leaked the email wrote. “As a Christian and a retired member of the RCMP I wanted to share this with you. I’m trying to wrap my head around this shocking email. I’m shocked it’s come to this.”

The event will take place on November 22 at St. John the Evangelist Anglican Parish. The presentation will be given by Dr. Gordan Gubitz, who is known for as a euthanasia practitioner and the Clinical Lead for MAID in Nova Scotia. Sheren condemned the event as “coercion,” warning that “this is a state-aligned institution… normalizing death as a service to the very people they already failed to support in life. This was a information session, to ‘educate’ veterans [whose] rates of PTSD and suicidality were already sky high. How they can apply or use MAID.”

In an interview with LifeSiteNews, a military chaplain wishing to remain anonymous warned that “This is clearly the culture of death spreading its tentacles, and is a huge insult to veterans.”

“As a military chaplain, it’s ironic how not long ago [we] focused on suicide prevention… this attested to the value of human life,” he continued. “While, at the moment, efforts are clearly being focused on suicide facilitation.”

“I know for myself and several of my chaplain colleagues, we are already making plans to exit the military,” the chaplain disclosed. “This is not what we signed up for. This is not the country we swore to defend.”

After the leaked email went viral on social media, a RCMP veteran suffering from cancer revealed that he was personally invited to the event, in what appeared to be a coercive tactic to force him to choose suicide.

The veteran further revealed that the presentation is not exclusive to Nova Scotia but is part of a country-wide initiative to promote euthanasia to veterans.

“As part of the new budget it appears that the government may be looking to move the RCMP away from veterans affairs to another government run entity that will manage RCMP disability benefits and healthcare for our veterans,” the veteran explained. “There is significant concern in our organization as to what this is going to mean for our vets. The fact that they are now pushing MAID to our vets, most of [whom] suffer from PTSD, is of grave concern.”

As LifeSiteNews previously reported, earlier this month, Sheren told the House of Commons that no less than 20 of her colleagues were offered unsolicited state-sponsored euthanasia.

As reported by LifeSiteNews, it was revealed last year that the federal department in charge of helping Canadian veterans appears to have purposefully prevented the existence of a paper after scandalous reports surfaced alleging that caseworkers had recommended euthanasia to suffering service members.

LifeSiteNews recently published a report noting how a Canadian combat veteran and artillery gunner revealed, while speaking on a podcast with Dr. Jordan Peterson, that the drugs used in MAID essentially waterboard a person to death. Assisted suicide was legalized by the Liberal government of former Prime Minister Justin Trudeau in 2016.

A new Euthanasia Prevention Coalition report has revealed that Canada has euthanized 90,000 people since 2016.

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MAiD

Health Canada suggests MAiD expansion by pre-approving ‘advance requests’

Published on

From LifeSiteNews

By Clare Marie Merkowsky

Health Canada released reports discussing advance requests for euthanasia, which would allow Canadians to pre-authorize their own killing even after losing decision-making capacity.

Health Canada has released a series of studies on advance requests for assisted suicide in its latest move to expand the nation’s euthanasia regime.

On October 29, Health Canada published a summary of the National Conversation on Advance Requests for Medical Assistance in Dying, which focussed on the suggestion to expand Medical Assistance in Dying (MAiD) by allowing advance requests for death by lethal injection.

“An advance request is a request for MAiD made by an individual who still has the capacity to make decisions, but before they are eligible or want to receive it,” the report stated. “Their intent is that MAiD be provided in the future: after they have lost the capacity to consent and when they meet the eligibility criteria for receiving MAiD.”

As it stands, in order for a person to be killed by euthanasia in Canada, they must provide “consent” at the time of their suicide. So-called “advance requests” would allow a person to approve their killing at a future date, meaning it would be carried out even if they are incapable of consenting, due to diminished mental capacity or other factors, when the pre-approved death date comes.

These request are currently illegal under the Criminal Code. Despite this, in October 2024, Quebec announced it is taking early requests for assisted suicide.

Now, in addition to not punishing Quebec for their disregard of the law, Health Canada, run by the Liberal government, appears to be in favour of changing the law to expand euthanasia even further.

The report presented a hypothetical case of a man suffering from Alzheimer’s disease, which would likely mean he would lose the ability to make health decisions as his condition progresses.

“Later, after thinking about it further, Charlie decides that should his health decline rapidly and he starts experiencing intolerable suffering after he has lost capacity to make health care decisions, he would like to have MAiD provided,” the report states.

“Charlie then works with his health care provider’s team to develop an advance request. It sets out the conditions that would constitute enduring and intolerable suffering for him after he has lost capacity,” it continued.

The report further cited surveys which found that Canadians were generally supportive of advance requests, but raised concerns over how the system would be implemented.

While the report purported to represent the thoughts of Canadians, it notably excluded Euthanasia Prevention Coalition Director Alex Schadenberg, who was not invited to the roundtable discussions but permitted to make a presentation.

Prior to the report, Schadenberg revealed that he believes Health Canada has “stacked the deck” to ensure an outcome in support of advance requests, “just like they’ve stacked the deck in every other consultation over the past several years.”

The push for advance requests began last November when Health Canada called for a “national conversation on advance requests” for euthanasia.

Since legalizing the deadly practice at the federal level in 2016, the Liberal government has continued to expand the criteria for who can “qualify” for death. In 2021, the Liberal government passed a bill that permitted the killing of those who are not terminally ill but who suffer solely from chronic disease.

The government has also attempted to expand the practice to those suffering solely from mental illness but has delayed  doing so until 2027 after pushback from pro-life, medical, and mental health groups as well as most of Canada’s provinces.

Already in Canada, assisted suicide has expanded 13-fold since it was legalized, making it the fastest-growing euthanasia program in the world.

The most recent reports show that euthanasia is the sixth highest cause of death in Canada. However, it was not listed as such in Statistics Canada’s top 10 leading causes of death from 2019 to 2022.

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