Terry O’Neill | Canadian Catholic News, OSV News
A government-ordered euthanasia facility, operated by the British Columbia government’s Vancouver Coastal Health Authority on the downtown campus of the Catholic-run St. Paul’s Hospital in Vancouver is now fully operational.
A six-month investigation into the impact of the government’s MAiD-imposition edict also uncovered that planning is underway for another euthanasia facility to be operated by Vancouver Coastal on the site of the new St. Paul’s Hospital on False Creek Flats, which is being built 3 kilometers east of the existing hospital.
Since 2016, Canada’s law on “medical assistance in dying,” or MAiD, exempts from criminal charges doctors and nurse practitioners who either directly administer lethal medication (euthanasia) or prescribe medication to cause a person’s death at their own request (assisted suicide).
Vancouver Coastal is also currently operating MAiD rooms in the same buildings that house two Catholic-run hospices in Vancouver.
The Catholic Church condemns both assisted suicide and euthanasia. The Catechism of the Catholic Church states that “suicide contradicts the natural inclination of the human being to preserve and perpetuate his life,” and is “gravely contrary to the just love of self,” while explaining that “intentional euthanasia, whatever its forms or motives, is murder.”
The Second Vatican Council also lists “euthanasia or wilful self-destruction” among modern moral “infamies” that “poison human society” and are a “supreme dishonor to the Creator.”
Providence Health Care, which operates all these Catholic facilities and is under the auspices of the Archdiocese of Vancouver, has long maintained policies, consistent with the church’s pro-life teaching, that prohibit abortion and euthanasia from being performed on its premises. However, it was powerless to block these developments.
Alex Schadenberg, executive director of the Euthanasia Prevention Coalition, has deep concerns about the imposition of MAiD units alongside Catholic facilities.
“This is incredibly sad news,” Schadenberg told Canadian Catholic News in an interview. “It’s sad that the unit is now operational. And I’m also incredibly saddened by the fact that the new St. Paul’s will also have a euthanasia clinic attached to it.”
The provincial government forced the euthanasia facility onto the current site of St. Paul’s Hospital in November 2023 in response to persistent pro-MAiD activism and media pressure.
The MAiD facility, about the size of a laneway home, built by Vancouver Coastal at an undisclosed cost, is in an interior courtyard of the hospital, founded 131 years ago by the Sisters of Providence.
The facility opened Jan. 6, a Vancouver Coastal spokesperson told Canadian Catholic News in an email dated April 17.
“The new space provides patients with options for specialized end-of-life care in a way that supports and respects them, their loved ones, and health-care providers,” he said.
Called the “Shoreline Space,” the facility is attached to an exterior wall of the western section of the hospital’s Providence Building, facing the courtyard. Public access to the facility from the courtyard is blocked by a locked gate and a 2-meter-high, black chain-link fence.
There is no exterior signage that would give pedestrians using the hospital’s nearby Thurlow Street entrance any hint of the purpose of the green-metal-clad facility, equipped with security cameras and floodlight fixtures.
Inside the hospital, there is also no indication that MAiD is provided behind a locked door that has the signage, “Shoreline Space. Vancouver Coastal Health.”
Vancouver Coastal emails, obtained by Canadian Catholic News through a freedom-of-information request, indicate the health authority launched a planning process to insert a euthanasia facility at the new St. Paul’s Hospital, slated to open in 2027.
No agency — the B.C. government, the Ministry of Health, Vancouver Coastal Health, Providence Health, or the Archdiocese of Vancouver — has announced publicly that the new St. Paul’s is being forced to accommodate a MAiD facility.
Yet, the text of a Nov. 15, 2024, email from Laurel Plewes, operations director of the “Assisted Dying Program” at Vancouver Coastal Health (VCH) to Jennifer Chan of Providence Health Care (PHC) shows that such planning is taking place.
Under the subject heading, “Preliminary VCH requirement for MAiD space at the new SPH (St. Paul’s Hospital),” Plewes wrote: “Here is a list of preliminary requirements, subject to refinement and additions.”
That list, in bullet form, reads:
“• Internal 2,800 sq feet
• We suspect PHC requirement will still remain, and VCH agrees, that the pathway must allow for patients to remain in their PHC bed
• 5 min or less travel time from pharmacy located in SPH
• Ramp or ground-level entry — ramp is not included in square footage above
• Require connections for sewage, water, electricity, and IT connections similar to what is listed in previous partial agreement
• At least two parking spots for staff, easy access for transfer van
• Physical address to support emergency services knowing where to go”
Most emails received in response to the freedom-of-information request were almost completely redacted, but one with the subject line, “Future Planning: MAiD spaces,” was sent by Nina Dhaliwal, a “senior project manager” at Vancouver Coastal, to four of her colleagues on Nov. 27, 2024.
It describes the need to connect all the parties to ensure that “future planning for MAiD spaces” is being done efficiently. Dhaliwal also asks whether “the MAiD team” had an “SOA” (presumably meaning Service-Oriented Architecture) and a “Functional Program.”
Although the email does not mention the new St. Paul’s Hospital, Vancouver Coastal released that information in response to a request for the communications regarding the possible construction of a MAiD unit at the new hospital.
Neither Vancouver Coastal nor Providence Health has commented in response to Canadian Catholic News’ questions about MAiD facilities at the new or old St. Paul’s.
Providence Health’s service contract with the provincial government guarantees that it can prevent abortions and euthanasia from taking place within Providence facilities. Patients seeking such procedures are discharged from Providence and transferred to a Vancouver Coastal facility.
Pro-euthanasia groups criticized the arrangement when MAiD was legalized in 2016, and then ramped up pressure when — as revealed in an article published in The B.C. Catholic in May 2022 — the B.C. branch of Dying with Dignity Canada launched a multi-platform public relations campaign aimed at forcing the B.C. government to amend the service agreement in order to compel Providence to allow MAiD.
Dying With Dignity called the “forced” transfer of patients to MAiD-allowing facilities “cruel and unusual.”
The pressure peaked the next year when news media seized on the case of a Vancouver woman, Sam O’Neill, whose family complained that she was forced to transfer from St. Paul’s to access MAiD. In response, the B.C. government announced what observers called a “workaround” or “end-run” solution in November 2023.
The arrangement called for the province to take land at the St. Paul’s campus on which to create a “clinical space” for MAiD to be performed. The space would be staffed by Vancouver Coastal healthcare professionals and was to be connected by a corridor to St. Paul’s Hospital.
“Patients from St. Paul’s Hospital accessing MAiD will be discharged by Providence Health and transferred to the care of Vancouver Coastal Health in this new clinical space,” the release said. The MAiD facility was originally scheduled to open in August 2024.
Then-Archbishop J. Michael Miller of Vancouver was quoted at the time as saying the directive “respects and preserves Providence’s policy of not allowing MAiD inside a Catholic healthcare facility,” and the new patient discharge and transfer protocols would be consistent with existing arrangements for transferring patients at other Providence facilities.
However, that did not end the matter. In June 2024, O’Neill’s mother, Dying with Dignity Canada, and a doctor launched a lawsuit against Providence, Vancouver Coastal and the provincial government, alleging they had denied O’Neill her constitutional right to access MAiD.
They seek to have MAiD conducted within all provincially-funded facilities, such as those of Providence Health Care, which relies on provincial funding for its operating costs. Providence owns the hospitals.
In a formal response to the claim, Providence not only described the St. Paul’s arrangement, but also disclosed that at two hospices it operates, May’s Place and St. John, “patients who choose to receive MAiD are provided with MAiD by a VCH healthcare provider in a space operated by VCH which is located down the hall from the Providence operated hospice rooms in the same building that houses the hospice.”
But that does not mean MAiD is actually being performed within a Catholic facility, explained Shaf Hussain, a communications officer with Providence.
Hussain said in a May 30 email to CCN that both St. John Hospice and May’s Place Hospice are in buildings and on lands that are not owned by Providence. He said he believes the whole building in which St. John Hospice is located “is leased by VCH.”
“Since September 2013, Providence has been operating a 14-bed hospice in the building and continues to do so,” he said. “In 2021, VCH took some space in the building for its Vancouver Community palliative programming. A room in that space is used for MAiD.”
Providence also leases space to operate a six-bed hospice in a building, in which “VCH also leases space,” he said. “This space, which they use for MAiD, is separate and away from our hospice operations.”
In a follow-up email to Canadian Catholic News on June 17, Hussain said that Providence does not present MAiD as an option to its patients.
“To clarify, no, we don’t proactively mention MAiD as an option to consider,” he said. “We never initiate an offer of MAiD.
“If a patient enquires about it, we contact the VCH MAiD team,” he said. “From PHC’s perspective, we ensure the patient is provided information about all (non-MAiD) end-of-life options, so the patient can make an informed decision.”
Hussain explained the process Providence staff follow if a patient inquires about MAiD, which includes assessing for MAiD eligibility by two doctors or nurse practitioners; discussing the patient’s medical condition with them; and discussing services and treatments that are available to relieve suffering, which “may include adjusting a current treatment plan, engaging palliative care services, community support services or other options.”
“A person does not have to accept any of these services, but it is legally required for a person requesting MAiD to be offered care options to address the person’s suffering,” he said.
From 2016-2023, more than 60,300 people in Canada have ended their lives through MAiD. The 15,343 who did so in 2023 — a number that did not include over 2,900 individuals who died before their MAiD request could be approved — accounted for 4.7%, or one in 20, of Canada’s 2023 deaths, according to government data.
Almost 96% of the 2023 MAiD deaths were sought by men (51.6%) and women (48.4%) whose median age was just under 78 years old, with cancer the most frequently cited condition (64.1%). MAiD does not require applicants to have a terminal medical condition, and efforts to expand the program to those citing mental illness as their primary reason for seeking MAiD, although tabled until 2027 due to litigation and public pushback, remain under discussion.
Dr. Will Johnston, who heads the Euthanasia Resistance Coalition of B.C., said he believes the B.C. government’s decision to force MAiD into previously life-affirming healthcare settings is a form of totalitarianism.
“This is another example of zealots who won’t allow the population any freedom from euthanasia,” Johnston said. “They obviously control the provincial government … I think it’s totalitarianism, and it shows none of their claimed virtues of inclusion and diversity.
Terry O’Neill writes for Canadian Catholic News. OSV News staff contributed to this report. This article was originally published by Canadian Catholic News and is distributed through a partnership with OSV News.