Two Canadian palliative care hospice centres thousands of kilometres apart are standing firm against pressure to start providing medically-induced deaths at their facilities.

The federal government has introduced new legislation expanding the eligibility criteria for euthanasia. The inaccurate term, medical assistance in dying (MAiD), is currently used to describe what this law would allow, but the process is more accurately called euthanasia or assisted suicide.

VANCOUVER -- Delta Hospice Society president Angelina Ireland is “shocked and outraged” that the B.C. government will pull all funding from the hospice by 2021 because it doesn’t offer assisted suicide.

OTTAWA -- The federal government’s proposed changes to assisted suicide will eliminate the requirement that a person’s death be reasonably foreseeable, but the government will not open up the system to the mentally ill at this time.

Canadian psychotherapists expect to soon find themselves in the same position as physicians when it comes to so-called medical assistance in dying — or MAiD — as the government looks to expand access to legal, medically-induced suicide.

OTTAWA -- The federal government wants four more months to change Canada’s assisted suicide rules to comply with a Quebec court decision that came down in September that said the existing regulations are too restrictive.

A bioethicist who spent decades urging Catholics to plan for their last days by naming a substitute decision maker in an advance care directive is now incensed at the idea the government will likely allow the directive to be used to invoke euthanasia.

OTTAWA -- As the federal government moves towards expanding who can access a legal medically-induced suicide, a vocal critic of state-sponsored death is demanding that conscience rights for doctors who don’t want to take part in what the Canadian government calls medical assistance in dying (MAiD) be protected by a federal law.

VANCOUVER -- Living in the region with the highest number of assisted suicides in Canada, Fr. William Hann of the Diocese of Victoria says he has seen much moral distress, broken families and troubling situations.

It’s true there’s a challenge, to say the least, in seeing the “bigger picture” when the picture’s focus is life and death itself.

The cry for more palliative care continues to grow louder in Canada. While protesting the introduction of legislation expected to expand access to assisted suicide next  month, Canada’s bishops joined many advocates in decrying stalled plans to give Canadians the alternative of palliative care.

OTTAWA -- The federal government is coming under increasing fire from critics of legal medically-assisted suicide in Canada for how quickly it is moving to change the regulations around assisted suicide and for how short a time period Canadians were given to express their views in an online survey overseen by the Ministry of Justice.

As most Canadians support fewer restrictions on assisted suicide, disability activists are worried the current system lacks safeguards.

EDMONTON -- The bishops of Alberta and the Northwest Territories are calling on Catholics to mobilize and oppose euthanasia and assisted suicide even as the federal government looks to make it easier to qualify for a medically-induced death.

VANCOUVER, B.C. -- A suburban Vancouver hospice is prepared to forego hundreds of thousands of dollars in government funding rather than bow to government pressure to provide euthanasia and assisted suicide.