1. Nurses... plus regular persons can get in on the killing

Nurse practicioners, along with doctors, will be allowed to kill by euthanasia and to prescribe lethal doses for assisted suicide. In addition, the bill actually permits “anyone” to carry-out acts of euthanasia and assisted suicide, once it is approved by two doctors or nurses. This is a dangerous element of the proposed legislation, and provides the perfect cover for murder.

2. Wide open access

Bill C-14 is dressed up to give the appearance of limiting eligibility to those who are terminally ill and close to death. However, the bill does not define how close to death a patient must be in order to qualify. It states merely that “the person’s natural death must be reasonably foreseeable”.

How is one to interpret reasonably foreseeable? It does not define it in terms of weeks, months or even years.  We believe that, in practice, this ambiguous term will result in doctors and nurses rubberstamping euthanasia requests for people who are nowhere close to death.

This deceitful language seems designed to give the appearance that the Liberals have restricted the bill to the terminally ill, when in fact, the reality on the ground will become much closer to wide open access, for almost anyone who requests it.

3. Psychological suffering

Although the Liberals have made it sound like it is limited to persons with a physical illness, in reality the bill gave a convoluted description of the medical condition of eligible persons which includes “psychological suffering”. On that basis, it may open the door to depression, or unhappiness with one’s medical condition, being accepted as a legitimate criteria.

4. No conscience rights protection

There is no conscience protection provided for doctors and other health care workers. Nothing in this bill protects doctors from being required to refer for euthanasia and assisted suicide.  In fact, the bill requires doctors and nurses to send all requests for euthanasia and assisted suicide to a “designated recipient” or to the Minister of Health. Therefore the bill requires all doctors and nurses to refer, at a minimum, if not participate in euthanasia and assisted suicide directly. The government is not protecting conscience rights for healthcare professionals.

5. Child euthanasia & for mental illness coming soon

In the press conference, the Liberal Health Minister and Justice Minister telegraphed that the government absolutely intends to extend killing by euthanasia to children, for those who are mentally ill and for people with dementia, in the not distant future. That is, of course, what its hand-picked committee recommended. The committee was headed by outspoken Liberal MP, Rob Oliphant (Don Valley West).  At the press conference, the government announced that it will begin to study these questions right away and then review the “risks and benefits” later on. To this end, it has indicated that the legislation will be "reviewed" in 5 years. 

The Liberals clearly favour permitting child euthanasia, euthanasia for psychiatric reasons and killing people with dementia. It is the opinion of CLC that they recognized that public opinion polls don’t yet show support for those practices, so the Trudeau government has chosen to bide its time.  The Liberals appear to have decided that that it would be politically dangerous to legalize the more contentious issues right away, since the public hasn’t been sufficiently propagandized and indoctrinated on these points.. yet. The left-wing liberal media has already begun to spin those issues. 

The Liberals might also be waiting for the court to do the dirty work of extending the killing for more contentious reasons once lawsuits arrive, thus giving Trudeau political cover.

6.  Catholic/faith-based hospitals and nursing homes remain a target

Although there has been much ink spilled in recent newspaper articles about whether Catholic/religious hospitals and other institutions who refuse to offer euthanasia should be stripped of public tax dollars, there was not a single mention about this at the government press conference.

There is no conscience protection for institutions in Bill C-14.  That silence indicates that the Trudeau government is probably open to the idea of coercing hospitals, or at the very least, not standing in the way of such coercion by provincial governments.