Canadian hospice faces job losses and eviction for refusing to euthanise patients

15 January 2021

Delta Hospice in British Columbia, Canada, has been forced to lay off workers and now faces eviction because it declines to euthanise patients.

A press release stated that it had “been left no other choice” but to let go of its workers since the local health authority, Fraser Health, had cancelled its service agreement and 35-year lease “simply because we decline to euthanize our patients”.

The action follows Canada’s Medical Assistance in Dying Law (MAiD), made law in 2016, granting Canadians the right to seek medically assisted death.

Since that time, the Fraser Health Authority, which delivers healthcare to 1.8 million people in southern British Columbia, has sought to impose MAiD in various health facilities across the region. And in 2018, the authority was accused of using bullying tactics to achieve this aim, as reported by SPUC.

The board at Delta Hospice has pointed out that, while they “accept that the provision of MAiD is an elective, legal service across Canada”, it is also the case that “nothing in Canadian law, however, requires medically assisted death to be made available everywhere, at all times, to everyone”.

Moreover, “the Constitution of our private Society and our commitment to palliative care, bars us from offering it. Neither the board of the DHS, nor the vast majority of our patients and members want to change that.”

SPUC comment

A SPUC spokesperson said: “The Fraser Health Authority’s extreme attitude towards Delta Hospice has nothing to do with actually helping patients. Rather, it is about quashing dissent, as well as imposing a universal and fanatical pro-euthanasia stance.

"The hospice has said that euthanasia is ‘directly antithetical’ to its founding philosophy.

"It is clear that Delta Hospice is being persecuted because of its nonconformity, in that it simply wants to practise medicine, not kill its patients.”

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Canadian hospice faces job losses and eviction for refusing to euthanise patients

15 January 2021

Delta Hospice in British Columbia, Canada, has been forced to lay off workers and now faces eviction because it declines to euthanise patients.

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