OTTAWA – Canada’s Catholic bishops are unlikely to issue national pastoral guidelines on how to accompany Catholics considering euthanasia, the bishops’ conference president said.

Published in Canada

OTTAWA – The archbishop of Vancouver has written to a local health authority to oppose a threat to make compliance with assisted suicide requests mandatory at all its health institutions, including Catholic hospitals and palliative care centres.

Published in Canada

QUEBEC CITY – Cardinal Gerald Lacroix of Quebec said he has no intention to follow in the steps of his fellow Canadian bishops of Alberta and the Northwest Territories in refusing funerals for those who asked to be euthanized.

Published in Canada

CORNWALL, Ont. – The Archbishop of Utrecht advised Canadian bishops to continue to decry euthanasia and assisted suicide so that Canada never emulates the Netherlands, where assisted killing can now be administered to psychiatric patients and the handicapped.

Published in Canada

One would think, as a teenage girl, suicide should be the very last thing on my mind. But in a recent conversation with my grandfather, I’ve had reason to reflect on just how much Canadians have changed their perspective on assisted suicide and what a contrast it is to his generation.

Published in YSN: Speaking Out

Promoters of assisted suicide and euthanasia have effectively used heart-wrenching stories from those experiencing great pain as they deal with illness. By putting a human face to a discussion, they have been successful in getting the courts and politicians to come aboard the right-to-die bandwagon.

Published in Canada

Priests should withhold the Sacrament of the Anointing of the Sick to people who have requested assisted suicide or euthanasia, according to pastoral guidelines issued by the bishops of Alberta and the Northwest Territories.

Published in Canada
September 15, 2016

Suicide fantasy

When Canada legalized assisted suicide earlier this year, the National Post’s coolly analytical Andrew Coyne wondered in a column whether we haven’t lost our way as a country. Barely two months after the legislation’s passage, a marker of how lost we are shows up in our insistence on going both ways at once.

Published in Peter Stockland

OTTAWA – The Canadian Bar Association (CBA) is calling on the government to expand access to euthanasia in a way that, according to opponents, would make it “wide open.”

Published in Canada
August 4, 2016

Relieving pain

Widespread abuse of prescription painkillers is a major problem that governments are right to address. But Ontario’s recent move to become the first Canadian jurisdiction to eliminate high-dosage opioid medications from its provincial drug plan goes a step too far.

Published in Editorial

TORONTO – Respecting the moral conscience of Canadians who oppose medical aid in dying requires systemic changes to improve access to palliative care, according to those who oppose the recently legalized procedure.

Published in Canada

A Belgian court has fined a Catholic care home for refusing to let a terminally ill woman receive a lethal injection on their property.

Published in International

Court challenges to Bill C-14 are expected to come from both opponents and supporters of assisted suicide, said Euthanasia Prevention Coalition legal counsel Hugh Scher.

Published in Canada

OTTAWA – Members of the Coalition for HealthCARE and Conscience are taking the College of Physicians’ and Surgeons of Ontario (CSPO) to court over its assisted-suicide policy that would force health-care practitioners to refer people for assisted suicide even if it goes against their conscience.

Published in Canada

OTTAWA – As euthanasia and assisted suicide became legal in Canada opponents vowed to continue the fight to protect conscience rights of health-care workers and Catholic institutions and to oppose inevitable court challenges to widen the net of assisted killing.

Published in Canada