B.C. pro-life leaders are crying foul over what they charge is a rigged Health Canada consultation on medical assistance in dying (MAiD), saying it’s aimed at suppressing opposition to the legalization of advance requests as Quebec is doing.

Abbotsford MP Ed Fast said in a statement to The B.C. Catholic he fears the consultations will advance “confusion and abuse of Canada’s MAiD regime.”

Dr. Will Johnston, a Vancouver family doctor who leads the Euthanasia Resistance Coalition of B.C., echoed Fast’s concerns, calling the consultation process “a sham” designed to deliver pre-determined support for further liberalizing Canada’s euthanasia law.

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“I think the Trudeau government are true believers in many radical ideas, and radical when it comes to suicide is one of them,” Johnston said.

The issue coincides with Quebec’s enactment of a law that overrides the federal ban on advance requests. Dr. Stephanie Green, a leading euthanasia practitioner from Victoria, said during a recent online MAiD seminar Quebec’s move will create “a certain amount of pressure” on the federal government to legalize advance requests nationwide.

The Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops has consistently condemned all aspects of Canada’s legalization of MAiD, saying it is “morally unacceptable because they are affronts to human dignity and violations of natural and divine law.” 

Johnston and Fast’s concerns centre on Health Canada’s late-November launch of what it calls a “national conversation on advance requests.” Under current law, persons cannot make a legally binding request to be euthanized at a future date. Typically, the issue arises when a person is diagnosed with a progressively debilitating disease, such as dementia.

When first diagnosed, the patient may have the legal capacity to request MAiD but does not want to be euthanized until sometime in the future when their condition worsens — at which time the patient’s deteriorated mental capacity would render them incapable of meeting the legal requirements to access MAiD.

Pro-euthanasia activists have lobbied for years to legalize advance requests. In Febuary 2023, they successfully persuaded Parliament’s Special Joint Committee on MAiD to recommend amending the Criminal Code to allow advance requests. The federal government responded by stating the issue required further study.

Health Canada says on its website that the consultation process launched in November will include an online questionnaire open to the public and “virtual regionally focused roundtables” comprising “a broad range of representatives.” These engagement activities are scheduled to run until late January 2025 but as of Dec. 3 the questionnaire was not on the website.

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The selection process for roundtable participants also remains unclear. In an emailed response to questions from The B.C. Catholic, Health Canada spokesperson Tammy Jarbeau said only that the roundtables comprise “provincial and territorial officials, persons with lived experience and a mix of stakeholder organizations.”

A truly representative selection of “stakeholder” groups should have included the Euthanasia Prevention Coalition, says executive director, Alex Schadenberg. Health Canada did not invite him to join any roundtable but merely allowed him to make a presentation.

Schadenberg believes Health Canada has “stacked the deck” to ensure a pro-advance-requests outcome. 

“Just like they’ve stacked the deck in every other consultation over the past several years,” he said.

Fast accused the government of intending to “inform” rather than consult, comparing this process to its earlier attempt to expand MAiD to include the mentally ill. 

“The Trudeau government was likely very surprised when the (parliamentary) committee recommended that Canada was NOT ready for this expansion,” Fast said.

Fast also called the advance-requests consultation process “obtuse and opaque,” warning that the public “should expect that the next target will be ‘mature minors,’ presumably without the consent of parents.”

Johnston believes the Trudeau government is aware its time in power may be ending and is rushing to implement as many policy changes as possible.

“They are scrambling to put advance requests and MAiD for psychiatric patients into place, knowing it will be very hard to reverse,” he said. “But I think they’ve finally made a gamble they may lose.”

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Schadenberg says public awareness of MAiD’s dangers is growing. He cites the results of an investigation by reporter Alexander Raikin, published last month by The New Atlantis, that found the province of Ontario had recorded at least 428 “non-compliant euthanasia deaths” and 25 per cent of providers violating the law.

Despite MAiD’s regulation and legalization being a federal matter under the Criminal Code, Quebec began allowing advance requests last month. The provincial government has instructed public prosecutors not to charge doctors performing euthanasia on patients who authorized their deaths via advance requests. The federal government has not launched a court challenge against Quebec.