Concerns have been raised about how Health Canada implemented its two-month national consultation on advanced requests for euthanasia that concluded Feb. 14.

The Christian Medical and Dental Association (CMDA) of Canada and the Euthanasia Prevention Coalition (EPC) are among the groups that say the survey's questions showed a bias toward allowing advanced requests for medical assistance in dying (MAiD).

Deacon Larry Worthen, the executive director of CMDA Canada, told The Catholic Register that his organization transmitted a guide to its membership with advice on how to clearly articulate opposition within the survey to counter the “form and the questionnaire (which) itself is extremely challenging and obviously is biased in favour of allowing advanced directives.”

Advertisement

Alex Schadenberg, executive director of the EPC, on his blog provided a guide to effectively answer each question. He wrote that questions seven and onward “are problematic since they infer that you support euthanasia by advance request.”

Question seven, for example, asks participants to weigh in on the safeguards that should be put into place when a person is composing their advanced request. Those taking the survey are specifically queried if a person must “wait for a minimum period of time following their diagnosis of a capacity-limiting illness before they can make an advanced request.” They are also asked if “the person who makes the request must validate it periodically (such as every five years) and can withdraw and modify it at any time while they still have decision-making capacity.”

Instead of providing any other answer that would have signalled tacit approval of advanced requests, Schadenberg advocated that respondees choose “prefer not to say.” He also advised choosing this option for questions eight, 10, 11 and 12, and “not at all important for question 13.” Question nine was the only one seeking a long-form (250-word) answer.

Schadenberg also shared that a coalition supporter completed the questionnaire “more than 20 times.” This struck him as notable as “usually a professional consultation will only allow an IP address to submit a response once in order to eliminate abuse of the online consultation.”

Despite the apparent biases, both Worthen and Schadenberg viewed it as important for Canadian Catholics and Christians to participate. Both said that they were pleased with how many people engaged in this process.

Advertisement

In an email to the Register, Schadenberg said the EPC’s “real hope is that it doesn’t go anywhere due to political timing.”

In addition to this online survey, Health Canada also engaged in discussions with health-care providers from all provinces and territories. It also conducted virtual roundtables with stakeholders including persons with disabilities, people with lived personal experiences, Indigenous groups and others.

A report containing the key findings is expected this spring.

Pro-life activist Amanda Achtman contributed to this discussion with a video produced through her Dying to Meet You cultural renewal initiative. Achtman’s five-minute profile of an elderly mother with dementia named Joan, and her caring, attentive daughter Jill, has garnered 29,000 views as of Feb. 16, just 13 days after it was uploaded to YouTube. The video makes a compelling case that we lose an opportunity to love, discover purpose and trust in God when we exclude people like Joan from society.

Jill said of her mother: “She is not a burden. She is a gift.” Joan herself expressed “life is very good, and then the question is how do we keep on going.”

In an email statement to the Register, Achtman said “allowing euthanasia for those incapable of consent at the moment of death is terrifying.”

Advertisement

“It suggests that the person ceases to have dignity and value once he or she can no longer make decisions,” wrote Achtman. “A person with dementia is still him or herself and, in the face of this particular vulnerability, needs not autonomy but rather an advocate — an advocate who will represent his or her best interests, and it is never in a person's interest to be killed.”

She added that she is “deeply saddened that persons with dementia are becoming increasingly at risk of being discarded, dismissed and discounted in our country. We think that it is people with dementia who are forgetful, but how obvious it is that we are the ones greatly at risk of forgetting and abandoning them.”