In what could prove to be a landmark case for religious and conscience rights in Canada, Montréal’s Archbishop Christian Lépine has taken on the Attorney General of Québec.

In an appeal for judicial review submitted to the Québec Superior Court on Feb. 5, Lépine asked for an immediate stay of the application of an amendment to the Act respecting End-of-Life Care that requires palliative care hospices to offer Medical Aid in Dying (MAID).

The June 2023 amendment specifies that “no palliative care hospice may exclude medical aid in dying from the care they offer.”

The palliative care centre that Lépine hopes to shield is the St. Raphael Palliative Care Home and Day Centre in Montréal, but the appeal raises larger questions of the future of the collaborative charitable work of faith communities unable to act according to their conscience.
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Evidence is mounting that assisted suicide’s introduction into the Canadian medical system is not only undermining governments’ oft-stated plans to improve palliative care but is actively damaging the country’s already inadequate palliative care system. Some patients are choosing to die rather than to continue to live without adequate palliative care.

Dr. Neil Hilliard, a palliative care expert from Abbotsford, British Columbia, said health facilities’ introduction of assisted suicide into palliative care wards and hospices, following legalization of Medical Assistance in Dying (MAiD) in June 2016, has led to a reduction in true palliative cares services.

“It’s like a cancer growing within the palliative care programs,” said Hilliard who, in 2017, resigned as medical director of the Fraser Health Authority’s palliative care program because of his opposition to the authority’s insistence that he support the performing of assisted suicide in hospices.

“(MAiD) is starting to take over to a certain degree. But still only 5% of people are choosing MAiD; 95% would prefer to live well until they die naturally.”
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Religious leaders across Saskatchewan say doctors who don’t want to help patients die shouldn’t be forced to refer them to another physician who will.

Christian, Muslim and Jewish leaders met with Health Minister Dustin Duncan at the Saskatchewan legislature Tuesday and said facilities should not be forced to help people end their lives either. Duncan said the province is looking at ways to accommodate those concerns about the new federal law that allows medical assisted dying.

The law says doctors can’t be forced to provide the service. But the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Saskatchewan policy also says they “must not abandon a patient who makes this request” and they need to arrange “timely access” to another physician or resources.

“We also feel that people do have a right to information,” said Mary Deutscher, with the justice and peace commission of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Saskatoon. “We have no problem with providing that information, but there’s something different about a direct referral, that actually says that you need to find someone who will carry through on what we see as a very harmful action. Do you want to force doctors to have to harm people that they care for? And many of these doctors do see this as a harmful action.”
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Today, representatives from various faith communities united to issue a joint call to Canada’s elected officials to support a robust, well-resourced, national palliative care strategy and to raise awareness of inadequacies in palliative care, particularly in the wake of the debate over Physician-Assisted Dying/Suicide.

In addition to issuing an Interfaith Statement on Palliative Care, the organizations reaffirmed that compassion is a foundational element of Canadian identity that should directly shape Canadian public policy when it comes to end-of-life issues. The spokespersons warned that assisted dying/suicide must not become a default choice for those struggling with terminal illnesses, and that it is a national imperative to enhance access to and the quality of palliative care.
“The need for quality, widely accessible palliative care should be one of the most pressing concerns of our country,” said the Most Reverend Noël Simard, Bishop of Valleyfield, on behalf of the Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops. “Faith communities, along with health care workers, have for centuries stood by the bedsides of the dying to comfort and protect, to heal and console. Today, as faith leaders, we recommit ourselves to this sacred task of providing the spiritual care so essential to palliative care.”
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