BC Hospice Society Opposed to MAiD in Palliative Care Faces Momentous Vote at AGM

The Delta Hospice Society in Delta, B.C., in a file photo. (Courtesy of Delta Hospice Society)

Having lost its 10-bed hospice due to B.C. government regulations, the Delta Hospice Society (DHS) will soon face what it expects to be a fierce confrontation at its annual general meeting as it attempts to adopt an explicit anti-euthanasia stance on its way to building a new private facility.

“This AGM is the ultimate showdown between our members for control of the Delta Hospice Society,” DHS president Angelina Ireland told The Epoch Times.

“We have the pro-life, pro-palliative care side versus the death squad. These are the woke pack who feel entitled to rip apart a 50-year medical discipline of palliative care orthodoxy because it’s more trendy to be able to kill vulnerable people in their sick beds.”

Provincial regulations mandated the non-profit society’s hospice in Ladner, a Vancouver suburb, to provide medical assistance in dying (MAiD) onsite back in 2019, to comply with B.C.’s MAiD policy. But the DHS board of directors refused.

Fraser Health Authority later terminated its $1.5 million-per-year contract with the DHS to operate the Irene Thomas Hospice built by the society with private funds. As the facility was built on land owned by Fraser Health, the authority took it over in March 2021.

The DHS board, which still has $4 million in assets, now envisions a new MAiD-free facility built on private land and supported by private funds. However, Ireland said she expects a “battle royal” at the March 26 online annual general meeting, which could see almost 14,000 people participating if most of DHS’s members attend.

Members will vote on a revised constitution and bylaws that will protect the society’s right to provide life-affirming palliative care and reject MAiD legislation within its private organization, states the March 7 press release.

In 2020, the B.C. Supreme Court and Court of Appeals ruled that the board could not deny membership to pro-euthanasia applicants, despite its argument that its constitution said one of the society’s goals was “to provide compassionate care and support for persons in the last stages of living, so that they may live as fully and comfortably as possible.”

Ireland said the board believes a more explicit stance against MAiD in its constitution would allow the board to have discretion over memberships and pursue the new facility.

“We’re relentless. We will never quit. It’s just that important,” she said. “So we will never stop fighting until we win.”

The society has launched new initiatives since losing its hospice. It has made a “Do Not Euthanize” advance directive available to members to help them avoid being coerced into euthanasia or having it occur without their permission. It has also created a Delta Cares helpline to “provide practical advice for individuals and families struggling with difficult end-of-life circumstances or bereavement.”

‘Caring’ Versus ‘Killing’

Alex Schadenberg, founder of the Euthanasia Prevention Coalition, is seeking a DHS board position.

The philosophy of care is what’s important, he said in an interview, noting that what the Delta Hospice Society is saying is what’s needed—that “we’re going to make sure we’re going to be involved with a model that provides care to people at the end of life, and it’s not got anything to do with euthanasia or assisted suicide.”

Schadenberg added that leadership is needed in Canada.

“That’s what’s made the Delta Hospice Society significant, because they’ve been willing to be leaders,” he said. “And it hasn’t been easy, has it? They’ve faced a lot of difficulty in taking on a leadership role.”

Douglas Farrow, a professor of theology and ethics at McGill University, also believes assisted dying has no place in palliative care.

“The distinction between caring for a dying patient and killing a dying patient is not difficult to make, in principle, though occasionally it gets complicated in practice. The distinction between caring and killing, however, is just what euthanasia proponents are determined to erase,” he told The Epoch Times.

Farrow said erasing that distinction accomplishes two things: “Salving guilty consciences is one. Expanding the killing to people who are not dying is the other.”

“The sustained assault on the Delta Hospice Society demonstrates that all this has nothing to do with compassion. To normalize killing as ‘caring’ is the goal,” he added. “Deep down, that is a terrible act of despair. It is not the beginning but the end of any humane civilization. Unhappily, this is something courts are prepared to tolerate and governments to encourage.”

Although MAiD advocates depict the practice as a human right, Farrow believes the entrenchment of MAiD represents a loss of personal autonomy in choice and in health care to the power of a bureaucratic state.

For this reason, “what the DHS is standing for is something we must stand for—not only the distinction between caring and killing, but the distinction between those who make the distinction and those who don’t,” he said.

“In other words, we must stand for the freedom to organize our own medical care according to our own principles. Otherwise, they will organize it for us according to theirs.”

“I, for one, don’t wish to be ‘cared for’ by the people with the erasers, or to be governed by them either.”