VANCOUVER, BC, June 17,
2024 /CNW/ - Dying With Dignity Canada (DWDC), the
national human-rights charity committed to protecting end-of-life
rights, and Arvay Finlay, the legacy
firm of Joe Arvay who was lead legal
counsel in the Carter case, will join forces in a
British Columbia court challenge
to ensure that the rights of vulnerable patients to access medical
assistance in dying (MAID) are protected within all British Columbia care facilities.
Right now, in some publicly-funded health care facilities, those
rights can be significantly impaired on the basis of someone else's
religious beliefs that a patient does not share. In some cases,
patients may not be able to access MAID at all. In others, they may
be forced to endure a painful and traumatic transfer to a different
facility at the most vulnerable time of their lives or may be
denied admission to hospice or palliative care because they wish to
access MAID.
A 2023 poll conducted by Ipsos on behalf of DWDC shows that 73%
of people across Canada believe
that publicly-funded health care facilities should be required to
provide the full range of health care services, including MAID, if
they have the proper equipment and staff to do so.
The legal team will be led by Robin
Gage, Kate Phipps, and
Catherine Boies Parker, KC, all
partners in the firm with considerable experience in constitutional
litigation. DWDC will act as public interest litigant on behalf of
patients, their families and loved ones, and clinicians, who have
suffered egregious harm caused by the denial of their section 7 and
2a Charter Rights.
Arvay Finlay filed the claim in
the Supreme Court of British
Columbia on Monday June 17,
2024.
If you, or someone you know has or is experiencing a forced
transfer, and you would like support or to share your experience,
please contact us at 1.800.405.6156 or info@dyingwithdignity.ca
Quotes
"A religiously affiliated health care facility's primary purpose
is to provide health care. Religious beliefs should never interfere
with a patient's health care choices; it is unconstitutional and
compromises the patient's care when they are most vulnerable. We
believe that a person should have access to all their end-of-life
choices no matter where they access health care. Addressing this
issue is long overdue, and it is incumbent on all of us to restore
rights to patients, their loved ones and their clinicians."
Helen Long, CEO, Dying With
Dignity Canada
"Health care is publicly funded by taxpayers in Canada. Many patients who end up in
faith-based institutions did not choose to be there and do not
share the beliefs of the organization. Government actors must
remain neutral in matters of religion and not offer preferential
treatment to particular religious institutions. Institutions do not
have souls or consciences—the people in them do. The Charter
demands respect for individual rights, including the right to be
free from religious coercion."
Professor Daphne Gilbert,
Faculty of Law at the University of
Ottawa and Vice-Chair of DWDC Board of Directors
"Vulnerable patients are severely harmed by health care
facilities refusing to allow MAID to be provided within their
walls. For example, their access can be delayed resulting in
extended intolerable suffering. It can be denied because they are
too medically fragile to be transferred or there may be nowhere
they can be transferred to. They may experience excruciating
suffering throughout the transfer. They may feel profoundly shamed
and stigmatized. They are denied the ability to make the choice to
live or die and to control the when, how, and where of their death
– all because of religious beliefs that they do not share."
Jocelyn Downie, Professor
Emeritus, Faculties of Law and Medicine at Dalhousie University
"As health care providers we have a duty to our patient to
relieve suffering by all legal means acceptable to them, while
remaining true to our own conscience. When confronted with forced
transfers we, as providers of medical assistance in dying, are
forced to tell the frail and vulnerable patients who are eligible
for and who have requested MAID that they will have to endure the
additional suffering of being transferred to a different place to
access their assisted death. And, this is not because we cannot
provide MAID at their bedside but because of institutional policy
forbidding MAID on the basis of religion. This means, the last hour
of their lives is spent in transit, in corridors, in unfamiliar
rooms and often sedated to endure the pain of the transfer. MAID
clinicians are forced to participate in these transfers against
their beliefs and their conscience causing enduring and severe
moral distress."
Jyothi Jayaraman, Palliative
care physician, Clinical Assistant Professor in the Department of
Family Practice and an Associate Member, Department of Medicine,
Division of Palliative Care at the University
of British Columbia in Vancouver,
B.C.
"Our beautiful 34-year-old daughter, Sam
O'Neill, was in excruciating pain when she tried to exercise
her legal right to MAID. She knew her cancer was terminal. The
doctors at the St Paul's had
explained there was nothing more they could do to help her. The
cancer was quickly and painfully spreading through her tiny frame
and life, as she knew it, was over. At this most painful and
vulnerable time of her young life, St.
Paul's Hospital refused to honour her decision, forcing her
to leave its premises and receive MAID elsewhere. She endured a
painful, undignified forced transfer. Sam and our family lost our
chance to say a final goodbye as she never woke up after being
sedated for the transfer. Sam suffered because her beliefs did not
align with that of a religious group. There was no peace in Sam's
passing. It was violent and cruel. We don't know if we will ever
heal from this experience, but we know we owe it to Sam to make
sure this never happens to another family."
Gaye and Jim O'Neill, parents
of Sam O'Neill
SOURCE Dying With Dignity Canada Inc.