Kindy (pictured) said the government needs to make major changes in how MAiD is administered. “Health care needs to be transparent and accountable in every aspect,” she said in an interview.
Kindy, a physician in Campbell River and the B.C. Conservative MLA for North Island, spoke with The B.C. Catholic following its recent report on systemic failures in the province’s MAiD program.
A B.C. Catholic freedom of information application revealed the B.C. Ministry of Health’s MAiD Oversight Unit has not issued a public report since assuming responsibility for MAiD oversight in 2018.
The newspaper also found the Oversight Unit is overseen by the same bureaucrat responsible for MAiD’s administration in B.C., and that the unit rarely reports to professional bodies any of the hundreds of administrative and paperwork errors it discovers each year.
Asked which of the findings troubled Kindy most, she answered, “all of the above.”
She said MAiD concerns are one part of a larger medical crisis in which British Columbians can’t access health care, leading many sick and elderly to chose euthanasia. “And I don’t think that’s what B.C. people want … to actually not take care of our vulnerable people.”
The lack of oversight puts vulnerable people at risk, said Kindy, who has heard directly from patients who said they were pestered to accept MAiD. “Rubberstamping oversight is not oversight,” Kindy said. “We need transparency, accountability, oversight, and also discipline.”
The B.C. Catholic contacted Health Minister Josie Osborne for a response to Kindy’s remarks and to the original revelations but has not heard back from her. Meantime, the three professional colleges that received 22 Oversight Unit referrals for investigation have now responded to B.C. Catholic queries about what became of the files.
The College of Physicians and Surgeons of B.C. said privacy laws prevent it from answering and that any information it can share is already on its website. No MAiD-related disciplinary action is apparent on the site.
The B.C. College of Nurses and Midwives said it has conducted 10 MAiD-related investigations since 2018. “None of these investigations resulted in hearings or disciplinary actions,” said communications coordinator Courtney Osborne.
Lesley Chang, a public information officer with the College of Pharmacists of B.C., said the college investigated three cases, two of which were “disposed of” under of a section of the Health Professions Act that allows a college to take “no further action if the inquiry committee is of the view that the matter is trivial, frivolous, vexatious or made in bad faith or that the conduct or competence to which the matter relates is satisfactory.”
The third case resulted in the pharmacist receiving a letter “advising them to always maintain appropriate documentation ... and abide by and comply with the legislative requirements and practice standards in all future practice.”
Toronto academic Trudo Lemmens, who serves on Ontario’s independent MAiD review body, agrees MAiD oversight lacks transparency and accountability in B.C. “At least in Ontario we have some willingness to open a report on challenging cases ... and that doesn’t exist in B.C.,” said Lemmens, a professor and Scholl Chair in Health Law and Policy at the University of Toronto. “And that’s why I’m particularly troubled about the lack of transparency.”
He said “serious controversies” in B.C. about MAiD eligibility make the matter urgent. He pointed to news reports last December about a wrongful death claim filed by the family of a man who was euthanized in a Vancouver clinic while on a day pass from a hospital psychiatric ward.
Lemmens, who was born in Belgium, said he began warning the Canadian public in 2016 about the escalating dangers of legalized euthanasia. At the time, he pointed to his homeland and the Netherlands to warn about what was coming.
“Now I don’t talk about [them] anymore because Canada has bypassed everything possible,” he said. “One of the ways ... is the way it is so aggressively pushed as a therapy even when people don’t ask for it.”
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