The British Columbia Civil Liberties Association filed a lawsuit challenging Canada’s ban on assisted suicide. The suit was filed in the province’s Supreme Court on April 26 on behalf of Lee and Hollis Johnson. The couple took Lee’s mother, 89-year-old Kay Carter, to Switzerland in January 2010 to have her killed by lethal injection, a crime that is punishable in Canada by [...]
Swiss voters rejected a proposal to ban assisted suicide and suicide tourism in the Canton (political district) of Zurich. In a referendum on May 15, about 85 per cent of voters in Zurich rejected a proposal to end legalized assisted suicide while about 78 per cent rejected a separate proposal to stop the practice of suicide tourism by foreigners in their Canton. [...]
Baby Joseph, son of Moe Maraachli and Sana Nader of Windsor, is one year old and suffering from a undiagnosed neurological disorder that impairs his breathing. He was put under the care of the London Health Sciences Centre and is staying alive with the help of a respirator. LHSC officials said that Joseph is in a vegetative state and will [...]
Now that baby Joseph Maraachli has gone to the Cardinal Glennon Children’s Hospital in St. Louis, it is important to once again consider why this battle occurred and why the Ontario government needs to change the Health Care Consent Act. The baby Joseph case was not about euthanasia. The Euthanasia Prevention Coalition became involved in the baby Joseph case because the way [...]
An expert witness for the Quebec National Assembly’s Special Commission on the Issue of Dying with Dignity testified on Feb. 17 that legalizing euthanasia and assisted suicide will lead to widespread abuse and the killing of the vulnerable. Dr. François Primeau, a professor of psychiatry at Laval University and Chief of Geranto-Psychiatry at the Hôtel-Dieu de Lévis Hospital, used the Netherlands as [...]
On Nov. 29, child murderer Robert Latimer was granted full parole. Latimer, 58, was convicted in 1997 for second-degree murder after the 1993 gassing death of his daughter Tracy, then 12 and who had cerebral palsy. Latimer, a Saskatchewan farmer, was granted day parole in March 2008, but last year the parole board refused to grant him full parole. He [...]
Robert Latimer has been granted full parole. I am not surprised by the decision, just ticked off. It sends a terrible signal to society that the life of a person with a disability is less valuable than the life of an able-bodied person. That is sick, perverse and dehumanizing. Canada is better than that. As the Euthanasia Prevention Coalition’s Alex Schadenberg says, “the EPC has [...]
A study published in the Oct. 5 British Medical Journal found that nearly half of all euthanasia deaths in the Flanders region of Belgium were not reported. This study combined with the recent study that was published in the CMAJ in May 2010 that indicated that 32 per cent of all euthanasia deaths in the Flanders region of Belgium were without request [...]
For many years the Euthanasia Prevention Coalition has been analyzing Canadian survey results related to euthanasia and assisted suicide. The first major survey that the Euthanasia Prevention Coalition commissioned was part of an Environics Group – National Omnibus survey in April 2001. The recent Environics Group survey, sponsored by Life Canada, shows that the EPC strategy not only convinced MPs to vote [...]
On April 21, Bill C-384 was overwhelmingly defeated when the House of Commons voted 228-59 against Francine Lalonde’s (BQ, La Pointe-de-l’Île) private member’s bill to legalize euthanasia and assisted suicide. After the vote, two Liberal MPs (Ujjal Dosanjh and Ken Dryden) sought but were denied permission to change their vote from in favour of C-384 to opposing it because they claimed they [...]
Bipartisan opposition to private member’s bill legalizing euthanasia and assisted suicide On March 16, the House of Commons debated Bill C-384, MP Francine Lalonde`s (La Pointe-de-l’Île, BQ) private member’s bill to legalize assisted suicide and euthanasia. The bill had already been debated for an hour in October, but the prorogation of Parliament in January and February moved it back to [...]
Where are we now? Where do we go? This article is written to establish the current concerns related to the issues of euthanasia and assisted suicide and the direction in which we must turn in order to reverse the trend toward giving physicians the right to intentionally and directly cause the deaths of their patients. In Canada, the debate surrounding euthanasia and [...]
On Dec. 30, Prime Minister Stephen Harper asked Governor General Michaelle Jean to prorogue Parliament, shutting it down until March 3. When Parliament prorogues, all unfinished government legislation dies, but private members bills do not. This means that C-384, the private members bill of Francine Lalonde that would legalize euthanasia and doctor-assisted suicide, will still be voted on when the new session [...]
Robert Latimer killed his daughter Tracey Latimer, who had cerebral palsy, in 1993 and after several trials and two Supreme Court decisions, began serving his “life” sentence for second degree murder on Jan. 18, 2001. By March 2008, he was out of prison on day parole. The Canadian Press has reported that Corrections Canada’s parole board had to recently admonish Latimer after [...]