OTTAWA – Palliative care advocates are applauding a new national framework document that has adopted an international definition of palliative care that excludes euthanasia and assisted suicide as elements of patient care. 

As Parliament awaits the imminent arrival of a report on assisted suicide that may make a bad situation even worse, it’s worth noting some chilling stories from the first countries to legalize medically induced death. This could be our future.

On rare occasions I get clear signals of what needs to be done in my life. When it comes, it arrives through people I respect. Each gives me the answer I need but I did not know I needed till I heard it. 

VANCOUVER – The rate of medically-assisted deaths on Vancouver Island is about five times higher than in the rest of the country.

EDMONTON – At what point does a health care provider become complicit in the act of medically-assisted death? 

Canada’s sudden withdrawal from the World Medical Association is likely due to a Canadian delegation feeling wounded and angry after their proposal to alter the world body’s code of ethics on euthanasia was resoundingly rejected, according to a Canadian doctor.

A grim picture of Canadians dying amid the noise and bustle of hospital acute care wards, unable to access quality palliative care, emerges from the first-ever comprehensive, national assessment of palliative care by the Canadian Institute for Health Information.

TORONTO – In a prestigious medical journal, doctors from Toronto's Hospital for Sick Children have laid out policies and procedures for administering medically assisted death to children, including scenarios where the parents would not be informed until after the child dies.

CORNWALL – Canada’s Catholic bishops aim to have palliative care resources available in every parish to help Catholics grapple with suffering and dying under a regime of legal euthanasia.

VATICAN – Caring for the sick, especially those near death, cannot be reduced simply to giving them medicine, but must include providing healing and comfort that gives their lives value and meaning, Pope Francis said.

The year was 1978. Jim Hughes had known his ups and downs in the business world. He’d experienced some failures but Hughes had worked through them and could finally consider himself a successful businessman. He was 35.

New federal government rules to monitor euthanasia and assisted suicide are opaque and weak at a time when legally induced deaths are rising at alarming levels, warn several organizations.

It would seem the war over euthanasia is over, but the fight is not ending for Alex Schadenberg.

OTTAWA – Canada’s Catholic bishops are urging the federal government to maintain a clear distinction between palliative care and the practice of euthanasia and assisted suicide so institutions are not forced to become “an accomplice” in causing an intentional death.

Whenever a doctor assists in a suicide in Ontario by injecting a patient with chemicals to stop the heart, it is recorded on the death certificate as a natural death.