Paul Tuns, Commentary: Pope Francis died on April 21 at the age of 88, after leading the Catholic Church for 12 years as its 266th pope. There were numerous articles and essays exploring his legacy. One cannot help but think of the apocryphal comment by Zhou Enlai, the Chinese Communist revolutionary, in the 1970s, when asked what he thought of the French Revolution: [...]
Paul Tuns: During a podcast interview with Olivier Primeau released on April 9, Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre said a Conservative government would not legislate on abortion or euthanasia. During the French-language interview, Poilievre said of abortion, “We will defend women’s freedom of choice.” He elaborated, “we will never change the law on abortion, we have already adopted … a policy for the [...]
At what point will the size of Canada’s so-called “Medical Assistance in Dying” program become cause for alarm? What percentage of our vulnerable, elderly, infirm, or disabled fellow citizens need to choose death (or have it chosen for them) before we feel chastened by our outrageous indifference, and our national conscience is, at long last, pricked? The statistics for 2023—which, curiously enough, [...]
Paul Tuns Numerous organizations from Canada submitted concerns about Canada’s euthanasia regime to the United National Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD), including worries expressed by the Canadian Human Rights Commission that some people will choose so-called Medical Assistance in Dying because they cannot access adequate medical care, housing, or other supports. Canada ratified the UN Convention on the [...]
Danielle Smith outraged about euthanasia Alberta Premier Danielle Smith appeared on the John Bachman Now Show on Newsmax in January. Toward the end of the interview, Bachman said that the increase in doctor-assisted suicide in Canada was frightening, and asked Smith for her opinion. Smith agreed that “one of the things that the federal government was allowing was a potential for [...]
Alex Schadenberg, Special to The Interim: When a jurisdiction is debating an assisted suicide bill, many organizations and individuals present information about the necessary safeguards that the jurisdiction must implement to “safely” legalize assisted suicide. The Euthanasia Prevention Coalition knows that it is not possible to “safely” legalize assisted suicide and once legal the law will inevitably expand. Great Britain is currently debating [...]
Paul Tuns: Toronto Cardinal Francis Leo called out the Trudeau government for “normalizing euthanasia” as he condemned the Health Department’s consultation to expand euthanasia through advance directives. In the Feb. 21 letter to Health Minister Mark Holland, the Cardinal stated, “Your government is normalizing euthanasia – by extension, those experiencing loneliness, isolation and depression associated with their medical condition are increasingly vulnerable [...]
Paul Tuns: The Fifth Annual Report on Medical Assistance in Dying released in December, and updated and clarified last month, revealed that there were 15,343 reported euthanasia deaths representing 4.7% of all deaths in 2023. The report, which must be released annually by Health Canada, showed a steady increase in the number of euthanasia deaths each year, rising from 2838 in 2017, [...]
Interim Staff: The Euthanasia Prevention Coalition (EPC) launched a petition to British Columbia Health Minister Josie Osborne, Conservative Health Critic Anna Kindy, and the College of Physicians and Surgeons of BC demanding a review of Ellen Wiebe’s euthanasia practice. Wiebe, a former abortionist, was recently prevented by court order by euthanizing an Alberta woman after her common-law husband sued, saying that his [...]
Josie Luetke: Interim writer, Josie Luetke, Talk Turkey Quebec “legalized” euthanasia in 2014, even though the federal prohibition wouldn’t be struck down by the Supreme Court until a year later, and the new parameters for the procedure not passed until a year after that. In 2019, a Quebec Superior Court ruling declared unconstitutional the requirement that one’s natural death be [...]
Mary Zwicker: Arrests have been made and a criminal case opened following the use of a “suicide pod” to end the life of an American woman deep in the Swiss woods. Swiss authorities are considering the possibility of charging the perpetrator with “intentional homicide.” The October Interim reported on the “Sarco” suicide pod and the death of Kate Connelly, a 64-year-old American [...]
Paul Tuns: Rita Marker, who Wesley Smith called “the great anti-euthanasia warrior,” died at the age of 83 on Oct. 30 after a long illness. Marker’s activism against euthanasia began in the mid-1980s after attending an international “right-to-die” convention in Europe. Smith said, “She was so alarmed by what she heard, she and her late husband and soulmate Mike Marker, formed the [...]
Paul Tuns: Diane Coleman, founder of the anti-euthanasia organization Not Dead Yet, died on Nov. 1 at the age of 71. Coleman, who was born with muscular spinal atrophy, a disorder that led her to use a wheelchair by the age of 11 and which doctors predicted would prevent her from reaching adulthood, founded Not Dead Yet in 1996 to show opposition [...]
Paul Tuns: Alexander Raikin published a report in The New Atlantis on Nov. 13, that reveals at least 428 Ontario patients who were killed by the country’s Medical Assistance in Dying regime that did not comply with federal law, or federal or provincial regulations. Raikin begins his report with the stark comment: “For years, there have been clear signals that euthanasia providers [...]
By J.M. Glover British Catholics fight against assisted suicide bill A recent CBC online story has reported that Russian On Oct. 16, British members of Parliament began debating a Labour bill to legalise assisted suicide. Cardinal Vincent Nichols, the head of the Catholic Church in England and Wales, released a pastoral letter to Catholics reminding them that “the evidence from every [...]