Health minister speaks about agreement allowing St Paul’s Hospital to opt out of medical assistance in dying
CTV
After the parents of a terminally ill Vancouver woman who was denied medical assistance in dying (MAiD) at St. Paul’s Hospital spoke out about the difficult final hours of their daughter’s life, B.C.’s health minister is responding to their concerns surrounding an agreement that allows Providence Health facilities to deny MAiD for religions reasons.
After the parents of a terminally ill Vancouver woman who was denied medical assistance in dying (MAiD) at St. Paul’s Hospital spoke out about the difficult final hours of their daughter’s life, B.C.’s health minister is responding to their concerns surrounding an agreement that allows Providence Health facilities to deny MAiD for religions reasons.
“You can be assessed for MAiD at St. Paul’s, and they do arrange for transfer. This represents, it should be said — and I know it’s difficult for the family in this case — about 0.2 per cent of MAiD. Meaning 99.8 per cent isn’t involved in such transfers at all,” said Health Minister Adrian Dix.
Sam O’Neill ’s father Jim said his 34-year-old daughter’s transfer to a nearby hospice in the final hours of her life robbed them of a dignified and peaceful goodbye. Sam, who had stage four cervical cancer, had to be sedated for the move, and did not wake up at the hospice before undergoing MAiD on April 4.
“The palliative care team did everything to help with the process,” he said. “And then they just bail when it’s time to put her in a van. And that’s the Catholic Church policy. It’s just cruel. This policy where they are allowed to opt out and force people to go through it, that’s cruel.”
Dix is not planning to scrap the decades-old agreement between the B.C. government and Providence Health that allows its facilities to opt out of procedures that go against the teachings of the Catholic Church.
“We aren’t putting forward that law at present. But I can tell you that B.C.’s provision of MAiD services, I think I would put up against any jurisdiction in the country,” said Dix.
When asked if religion should play a role in the kind of treatment patients receive at publicly-funded Providence Health Care facilities, he pivoted to praising the work of St. Paul’s.
