On Oct. 30, the Province of Quebec implemented its highly controversial euthanasia directives that allow certain patients to make advance requests for medical assistance in dying (MAiD), beating any national changes to the current law. Now, patients can request MAiD well before the natural end of life under the guise that the appeal is required before their condition renders them incapable of giving consent.

The Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops (CCCB), the Pontifical Academy for Life (PAV) and collaborating stakeholders have crystalized a vision of palliative care that champions life rather than medically assisted death.

In 2013, I wrote a column for the National Post about Dr. Donald Low, a microbiologist at Mt. Sinai Hospital. He spoke about his cancer diagnosis, his fear of tremendous pain that might be looming and the loss of his dignity. He spoke without self-pity and urged Canada to make physician-assisted death legal. He died eight days later. 

“Saddened, but not surprised” is how Cardinal Thomas Collins characterized his reaction to Canada’s now infamous reputation as the world’s fastest-growing euthanasia regime.

A coalition of disability rights organizations has united to challenge Track 2 of Canada’s Medical Assistance in Dying (MAiD) law, which provides euthanasia to people with a disability who are not dying or whose death is not reasonably foreseeable.

Hope already seemed on life support in what have become the killing fields of Canada’s public health-care system.

The fifth-leading cause of death in Canada is one that didn't even exist just eight years ago.

In response to the concerns for the rising numbers of incarcerated Canadians asking to end their lives by medical assistance in dying (MAiD), Catholic Charities of the Archdiocese of Toronto has brought together two organizations that serve the marginalized of society in a unique collaboration to provide end-of-life care for prisoners.

The Christian Medical and Dental Association (CMDA) of Canada, along with more than 40 Nova Scotia medical practitioners and 10 Dalhousie medical school graduates, have urged the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Nova Scotia (CPSNS) to renege on a new policy they believe violates their conscience rights.

Despite concerns surrounding the implementation of Medical Assistance in Dying (MAiD) for Canadian federal prisoners, the Correctional Service of Canada (CSC) is confident the process is fool proof.

The appalling contemporary throwback known by its cutesy euphemism “medical aid in dying” (MAiD) is now making its death fingered presence felt in the nation’s jail houses.

More than half a year has now passed since the British Columbia government ordered Vancouver Coastal Health to build a euthanasia facility next to St. Paul’s Hospital, thereby doing an end run around the Catholic hospital’s principled opposition to assisted suicide.

The parents of a terminally ill woman who was transferred to another facility to be euthanized after St. Paul’s Hospital refused to allow the procedure on its premises are suing the provincial government and Providence Health Care, the Catholic health-care provider that operates St. Paul’s.

Despite recent revisions to guidelines for Medical Aid in Dying (MAiD) in Canadian prisons announced in March, correctional investigator Ivan Zinger remains concerned about a process that remains opaque to public scrutiny. 

As support for euthanasia grows across the country, the line between genuine and holistic palliative care and medical assistance in dying has become increasingly blurred nearly inconclusively according to palliative care professionals in Canada.