MAiD raised with Vancouver priest during hospital care — twice

My latest reporting in the B.C. Catholic newspaper

A Vancouver priest recovering from a hip fracture at Vancouver General Hospital says he was twice offered assisted death by health-care staff who knew he was a priest and opposed to euthanasia — a practice critics say is growing as medical professionals are increasingly encouraged to initiate such conversations.

“There are some things you just don’t talk about to some people,” said Father Larry Holland, who has completed studies in health-care chaplaincy in addition to serving at numerous parishes in the Archdiocese of Vancouver.

He described his reaction when a doctor brought up the option of MAiD should his condition deteriorate. “I think I was very shocked,” he said. “It is such a sensitive subject.”

Father Holland, 79, is currently convalescing at VGH after suffering a hip fracture from a fall in his bathroom on Christmas Day. He spoke to The B.C. Catholic about the offers of medical assistance in dying (MAiD) from two health-care professionals, despite their knowing he was a Catholic priest.

Father Holland said he wasn’t dying then or now and that the doctor’s mention of MAiD left him “kind of silent” for a moment. The doctor then raised the subject again, saying it’s “something they have to discuss with someone who’s been given a terminal diagnosis.”

Father Holland recalled telling the doctor he was morally opposed to euthanasia. The doctor explained that “he just wanted to make sure that, if a [terminal] diagnosis came up or not ... I knew of the different services I had access to.”

Weeks later, a second offer of MAiD came from a nurse who the priest said seemed uncomfortable raising the topic and was likely doing so out of compassion because of the pain he was enduring.

“It’s a false compassion, really,” he said.

A spokesman for Vancouver Coastal Health, which operates VGH, told The B.C. Catholic in an email that “staff may consider bringing up MAiD based on their clinical judgment, provided they possess the necessary knowledge and skills to do so.”

Staff are also “responsible for answering questions when patients bring up the topic of MAiD,” the spokesman said.

The two incidents arise as Canada approaches 100,000 assisted dying deaths, a milestone explored in a B.C. Catholic series starting this week. Over the next several weeks, the paper will look at how a decade of legalized killing has reshaped health care, ethics, and attitudes toward life and death in Canada.

Father Larry Lynn, the Archdiocese’s pro-life chaplain, said he was shocked to hear about Father Holland’s case.

“This must surely be among the most appalling examples of Canada’s coercive and insensitive euthanasia regime,” Father Lynn said in an interview.

He said it’s disturbing that a health-care provider suggests euthanasia with any patient, and particularly when the patient is a consecrated religious known to be morally opposed. “It places the medical practitioner into the role of the devil, tempting a vulnerable person into mortal sin.”

He’s equally troubled that Canadian euthanasia providers aren’t ruling out initiating discussions with Roman Catholics about MAiD. In a document titled Bringing up Medical Assistance in Dying (MAiD) as a clinical care option, the Canadian Association of MAiD Assessors and Providers recommends against assuming patients oppose MAiD because of their faith.

The document says, “Health care professionals may draw incorrect assumptions about a person’s views on MAiD; e.g., they may assume that a patient objects to MAiD because she is a Roman Catholic nun, and yet Roman Catholic nuns and others dedicated to a faith-based way of life have requested MAiD.” The booklet does not provide a source for the information.

An updated version published in March removes the Catholic reference but gives the same advice regarding people of a “faith community” and even those of “strong faith.”

Father Lynn called it “diabolical” to use a nun as an example for overcoming a patient’s moral objections.

The booklet reflects a recent trend of encouraging health-care personnel to initiate MAiD discussions with patients. In November, The B.C. Catholic reported on a little-known 2023 Health Canada document urging health authorities and professional bodies to adopt “practice standards” requiring doctors and nurse practitioners to raise MAiD with certain patients.

The MAiD assessors and providers document similarly says physicians and nurse practitioners involved in care planning and consent processes “have a professional obligation to initiate a discussion about MAiD if a patient might be eligible for MAiD.” However, Health Canada does not have the authority to require provinces or health authorities to adopt such guidelines and The B.C. Catholic found no evidence of any public agency or professional body in B.C. doing so.

Amanda Achtman, creator of the anti-euthanasia project Dying to Meet You and ethics director of Canadian Physicians for Life, says initiating MAiD discussions in a medical setting is a form of coercion that attacks patients’ deepest convictions when they’re vulnerable. To “torment” someone who has deeply held beliefs with an offer of MAiD is “an attack on their identity,” Achtman said.

Father Holland admitted he was in so much pain that he could “feel the temptation” to accept MAiD. “It’s a human reaction. We always look for the easy way out.”

Conservative MP Garnett Genuis has introduced Bill C-260, An Act to Prevent Coercion of Persons Not Seeking Medical Assistance in Dying, which would prohibit federal employees from proactively offering or recommending MAiD. The bill resulted from incidents of bureaucrats such as veterans counsellors trying to steer vulnerable people toward assisted dying.

The Alberta government introduced legislation in March that would restrict regulated health professionals from providing information about MAiD to their patients unless the patient brings it up. The Safeguards for Last Resort Termination of Life Act would also restrict the public display of MAiD information, such as posters, within health-care facilities.

The bill is worth supporting, said Achtman, who lives in Calgary. “Simply being offered euthanasia already kills the person, because it defeats and deflates their sense of self-worth and value.”

The unwanted initiation of MAiD discussions in Canada made international headlines in March after Achtman shared the story of an 84-year-old woman, Miriam Lancaster, who went to VGH last year for severe back pain. She said the first doctor she spoke with in the emergency room raised MAiD before any diagnostic work had been done. Lancaster’s daughter was present and confirmed the incident, adding her mother eventually responded to rehabilitation and rest.

The Catholic chaplain at VGH, Father Ronald Sequeira, said it’s a constant struggle to help suffering patients not lose hope. He tries to offer them “some kind of encouragement and comfort,” but many give up.

“The moment you lose hope, the devil comes in, in different personalities, and says, ‘Do you want MAiD? I don’t want people to suffer.’”

Patients often don’t realize that suffering is redemptive, he said. “

God makes us more pure, more strong, through the suffering when we offer it up,” Father Sequeira said. “So we give hope — help them not to lose hope.”

Father Holland said turning down an offer of death opens one to new experiences. Even enduring pain “can encourage growth,” he said. “It can motivate you, it can open up new worlds, new vistas, new opportunities,” including enriched relationships.

He said he is sharing his story in the hope it will help others. “I went through it; you can go through it too.”

MAiD at 10: how assisted dying is reshaping Canada

My latest in the B.C. Catholic newspaper.

The origin of this special series goes back to last November, when new national data showed Canada now records more euthanasia deaths than any other country, and the second-highest rate internationally. Those figures prompted a question that has only grown more urgent: What has 10 years of medical assistance in dying meant for Canada?

Reporter Terry O’Neill set out to look beyond individual developments and examine their cumulative effect on the law, on health care, and on attitudes toward life and death.

Several of these questions are now being tested in real time — in the courts, in Parliament, and within the health system itself. Together, they point to a country struggling to understand how MAiD is shaping health care, public policy, and the lives of individual Canadians.

The living room of the modest Surrey bungalow felt unusually still, its drawn curtains softening the sunlight and protecting the privacy of those inside.

In a corner stood a nurse practitioner beside a 77-year-old woman, Alice, resting in her favourite reclining chair.

Alice was in the process of being euthanized by the nurse, who had just finished injecting the last of three drugs in the deadly cocktail most commonly used to administer medically assisted dying in Canada. Two doctors had certified that she was suffering from a fatal disease, amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, and that she was legally competent.

Alice’s death was typical of many of the nearly 17,000 MAiD deaths recorded in Canada in 2024 — with one notable exception. She had asked to be surrounded by her four grandchildren, ages six to 13, while she was being killed. The family complied.

As related to the B.C. Catholic by an acquaintance who has direct knowledge of the events of Alice’s MAiD death, the grandchildren were traumatized by the experience. The B.C. Catholic agreed to keep the source unnamed and to change details of Alice’s death (including her name) to protect the family’s identity.

“Those poor kids, they cried and cried,” the source said. “It was simply horrible. They didn’t understand why they had to be there.”

He said he believed Alice had not fully considered the impact on her family when making her decision. As well, he could not understand the children’s parents’ decision to agree to Alice’s request.

“That death—it’s going to haunt them forever,” he said. “How can those kids not be scarred by that? What are the long-term consequences going to be?”

It’s an essential question that has implications beyond an individual incident. MAiD, one of the most permissive euthanasia regimes in the world, has had a significant impact on Canada in ways that haven’t been fully considered. In this series, the effects of medically provided death will be examined: what it has done to the nation’s psyche, the social and psychological consequences that we see today, and what might be the consequences in years to come.

Critics say none of these questions were adequately considered 10 years ago when, responding to emotional appeals to shorten end-of-life suffering and invoking personal autonomy, Parliament legalized euthanasia in June 2016.

Proponents of MAiD said at the time that it would be available only for those near death and suffering grievously. But what critics feared, an inevitable slippery slope of ever-more-permissive euthanasia, led to a rapid expansion, especially after the law was amended in 2021 to allow euthanasia for people whose death was not reasonably foreseeable.

The U.S. magazine The Atlantic captured this country’s MAiD crisis in a September 2025 feature story entitled, “Canada is killing itself.” The story described how patients who aren’t dying can now access MAiD, and reported on the looming March 2027 legalization of MAiD for those whose sole affliction is a mental-health disorder.

The Atlantic captured this country’s MAiD crisis in a September 2025 feature story entitled, “Canada is killing itself.” (The Atlantic) Writer Elaina Plott Calabro noted that the Quebec College of Physicians has raised the possibility of legalizing euthanasia for infants born with severe malformations, a practice “currently legal only in the Netherlands, the first country to adopt it since Nazi Germany did so in 1939.”

Statistics Canada figures already paint a grim picture. By the end of 2024, Canada had recorded 76,800 MAiD deaths, including 16,499 in 2024 alone—the highest single-year number of any country in the world. Canada has the second-highest MAiD rate as a percentage of all deaths, at 5.1 per cent, trailing only the Netherlands’ 5.8 per cent.

The report noted that Canada’s caucasian population accounted for a staggering 96 per cent of all MAiD deaths, even though it constitutes only 70 per cent of the population. The federal government has not looked for an explanation, but it has studied the question of why the Indigenous MAiD rate is so low.

According to Statistics Canada, about 1,400 people died by MAiD every month in Canada in 2024. If that rate continues through 2026, the country will record its 100,000th MAiD death before June 17, the tenth anniversary of the date the Criminal Code amendments permitting euthanasia received Royal Assent.

Catholic observers interviewed for this series agree that MAiD’s legalization has unleashed a cultural shift that has altered the country’s moral imagination.

Effects include: cultural shift toward viewing death as a solution; erosion of the social commitment to care for the sick, elderly, and disabled; undermining of palliative care; marginalization of disabled and vulnerable people; and distortion of the role and identity of medicine. Canada’s permissive MAiD regime has blurred the boundary between legal euthanasia and illegal “mercy killing,” says Alex Schadenberg, executive director of the Euthanasia Prevention Coalition.

Schadenberg pointed to the February sentencing in Ontario Superior Court of Philippe Hebert, who was sentenced to two years less a day of house arrest following his guilty plea to manslaughter after he used an incontinence pad to suffocate his seriously ill partner of more than 40 years, Richard Rutherford. The Crown had asked for Hebert to serve six years in jail, while the defence had asked for a two-year term.

In passing sentence, Superior Court Justice Kevin Phillips Ssaid, “In every respect, this was an assisted-suicide mercy killing.” A more accurate description would have inserted the word “illegal” before “assisted-suicide.”

Under Canadian law, it is illegal to aid or abet a person in ending their life except under the specific conditions set out for MAiD, which allows for either clinician-administered or self-administered death. Hebert’s actions fall outside that legal framework.

Schadenberg now fears it will be “open season” for assisted suicides conducted by persons who are not medical practitioners. In a blog post, he wrote that Canada’s legalization of euthanasia “has eroded the willingness of judges to penalize someone who has murdered a sick friend or relative.”

The impacts of Canada’s growing pro-MAiD culture are also being felt within the Catholic Church, even though it holds that suicide, assisted suicide (when fatal drugs prescribed by a doctor but are then self-administered), and euthanasia (a doctor or nurse practitioner administers the drugs) are gravely wrong.

Pressure from pro-MAiD activists on Catholic health facilities, such as those operated in Vancouver by Providence Health Care, has received significant media attention and led to the provincial government’s imposition of a MAiD clinic abutting St. Paul’s Hospital in Vancouver. That clinic, which is called Shoreline Space, opened in January 2025.

The issue has also been the subject of a B.C. Supreme Court case challenging how MAiD access is handled at St. Paul’s Hospital and other Providence facilities.

Writing in the October 2025 edition of Pulse, published by the U.S.-based Catholic Medical Association, medical ethicist Yuriko Ryan of Vancouver said the presence of Shoreline at St. Paul’s is a form of contamination and coercion of Catholic health care.

“If Catholic healthcare is to remain a witness to the dignity of life, then MAiD-free zones cannot be left to chance, convenience, or the whim of those who promote euthanasia,” Ryan wrote.

Canada’s permissive MAiD regime has blurred the boundary between legal euthanasia and illegal “mercy killing,” says one critic. (Adobe) She called on CMA members and all who serve in health care to witness to the dignity of life by safeguarding spaces that are theologically rooted and morally grounded. “Let us call our brothers and sisters, regardless of vocation, to build to care, not to coerce,” Ryan wrote.

Catholic leaders are also concerned that a pro-MAiD mentality seems to be infecting some Catholic laity. The B.C. Catholic has been told by priests and laypeople of instances of Catholics choosing to be euthanized. A Fraser Valley woman said she knows of four fellow parishioners who succumbed to the lure of MAiD. “I can’t understand it,” said the woman, who asked not to be identified. “They were all practising Catholics and then, at the last minute, they threw it all away.”

Hope and Dignity, a guide produced by the Archdiocese of Edmonton and supported by the Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops, offers advice on what to do if a Catholic family member is planning MAiD, how priests should respond pastorally, and whether sacraments can be offered in such circumstances.

The guide offers a prayer “for those tempted by assisted suicide or despair,” indicating the issue is no longer theoretical.

Eoin Connolly, executive director of the Canadian Catholic Bioethics Institute, points a finger of blame at judges and politicians for Canada’s descent into MAiD permissiveness.

“By focussing narrowly on the circumstances of particular individuals, the courts and legislators failed sufficiently to account for the broader social and cultural implications that such legalization would have for Canadian society as a whole,” Connolly said in an interview.

Germain McKenzie, a theologian and sociologist with Catholic Pacific College in Langley, said it is important to look at the moral and societal trends that converged to produce the current MAiD regime.

“It’s the idea of autonomy pushed to the extreme,” McKenzie said. “But it’s not the right way to live. You cannot live like that as a harmonious society.”

McKenzie identified five trends that helped create the conditions that allowed the right to personal autonomy to take precedence over all others and elevate euthanasia to a perceived right in Canada:

· Radicalization of the Enlightenment principle that reason alone should guide one’s life

· Expansion of the Romantic concept of devoting oneself to self-discovery and self-fulfilment

· Growth of mass society and mass media, giving power to “the few” to shape the thoughts and actions of “the many”

· Capitalism’s tendency to devolve moral considerations into utilitarian cost-benefit analyses

· Developments in medical technology, allowing unnatural and immoral practices

Western society was once knitted together by a Christian ethos that has unravelled since the Second World War, McKenzie said. “Basically because of what is called secularization.”

Over the next several issues, The B.C. Catholic will examine how MAiD has affected the country, what the long-term consequences might be, why the Catholic Church’s opposition to MAiD is so firm, and where there is hope for stemming or reversing the expansion of MAiD.

Key dates in MAiD in Canada

February 6, 2015

Supreme Court of Canada’s Carter v. Canada ruling orders legalization of assisted dying.

June 17, 2016

First federal MAiD law (Bill C-14) receives Royal Assent.

September 11, 2019

Quebec Superior Court’s Truchon and Gladu decision strikes down Bill C-14’s restriction limiting MAiD to those whose natural death was reasonably foreseeable.

March 17, 2021

Expansion of MAiD (Bill C-7), removing the “reasonably foreseeable death” requirement and creating two eligibility tracks.

February 15, 2023

Parliament’s Special Joint Committee on Medical Assistance in Dying recommends allowing MAiD for “mature minors” and permitting advance requests.

March 17, 2027

Planned expansion of MAiD to persons whose sole underlying medical condition is mental illness.

MAiD in Canada: what the law allows

What is MAiD?

Medical Assistance in Dying (MAiD) allows a doctor or nurse practitioner to end a patient’s life, or to prescribe medication for that purpose, under conditions set out in Canadian law.

Two tracks

Track 1: Patients whose natural death is reasonably foreseeable.

Track 2: Patients whose natural death is not reasonably foreseeable.

What changed in 2021

Bill C-7 removed the requirement that a person’s death be reasonably foreseeable, expanding eligibility and creating the two-track system.

What is scheduled for 2027

MAiD is set to expand to include individuals whose sole underlying condition is mental illness.

What is being debated now

A private member’s bill introduced by MP Tamara Jansen seeks to prohibit MAiD where mental illness is the sole underlying condition.

MAiD in Canada: by the numbers

Total deaths

76,800 MAiD deaths in Canada by the end of 2024

Annual deaths

16,499 MAiD deaths in 2024

Share of all deaths

5.1% of all deaths in Canada

Monthly rate

About 1,400 MAiD deaths per month

Projection

Canada is expected to reach approximately 100,000 MAiD deaths in 2026

Global comparison

Canada has one of the highest MAiD rates in the world, second only to the Netherlands

Five generations of public service

Some of you may know that, from time to time, I've shared that I was inspired to enter public life, as a two-term Coquitlam City Councillor, by the stories my mother told me about her father, John Caswell Davis, who was a senator representing Manitoba. But that's not all the political service on my late mother's side of the family. In fact, her sister, my aunt Lucille Davis Huot, was a school trustee in St. Boniface, Man. Her maternal grandfather, Edouard Guilbault, was an alderman (councillor) in St. Boniface, and his father (my mom's great grandfather), Victor Mager, was the Reeve (mayor) of St. Vital, Man. So, counting me, that's five consecutive generations of political service on my mom's side of my family. It was only this week that I finally figured this all out! Photos below, top to bottom, are of Mager, Guilbeault, Davis, and Huot. Check out their bios at Memorable Manitobans.

Our crystal ball

Well before DRIPA, the magazine I edited in the 1990s foresaw the impact of recognition of aboriginal title on the province of British Columbia.

Flowers bloom with life for seniors in a culture of loneliness

My latest story for the B.C. Catholic newspaper

The elderly lady was sitting slumped in a wheelchair parked near a window in the common room of her Maple Ridge retirement home when a volunteer from St. Luke’s parish approached.

“Happy Easter!” the volunteer said, handing the woman a potted African violet and a greeting card reading, “You Matter.”

The senior read the card slowly, covered her face with her hands, silently began to weep, choked up with emotion.

The “You Matter” message “really resonated,” said St. Luke’s parishioner Elizabeth Loch, who organized teams of family members and fellow parishioners to visit two seniors’ residences on Holy Saturday as part of the annual Blooms into Rooms Easter-flowers project.

“Like far too many of our seniors, she was probably feeling that she didn’t matter to anyone anymore,” said Loch. “I’m glad we could do something to bring her some comfort.”

Blooms into Rooms volunteers noted similar responses among many seniors on Holy Saturday as they delivered flowering plants and greeting cards to across the Lower Mainland.

This year’s “You Matter” theme was adopted in part because of the high number of seniors being euthanized out of loneliness and isolation.

“It’s clear that the increasing isolation and loneliness of seniors—even when they are living in group residences or retirement homes—is a real problem,” said Wim Vander Zalm, a founder of Blooms into Rooms, which marked its 32nd anniversary this year with 12 teams from Catholic parishes and schools visiting a record 1,700 seniors in 19 locations from Chilliwack to Coquitlam.

“We don’t want to see our grandmothers and grandfathers turning to euthanasia because of isolation, loneliness, or a feeling that their lives don’t have meaning any more,” he said. “That’s simply not right.”

A 2023 report by Canada’s National Institute of Ageing found that 41 per cent of Canadians 50 years and older are at risk of social isolation and up to 58 per cent have experienced loneliness.

Numbers like these are part of a “culture of loneliness” driving up the number of Canadians seeking Medical Assistance in Dying, Euthanasia Prevention Coalition executive director Alex Schadenberg said last year.

The same conclusion is supported by data collected by Health Canada and published in its annual MAiD report.

In the “nature of suffering” section for 2024, Health Canada reported that in 45 per cent of the 732 Canadians who received Track 2 MAiD—when natural death is not reasonably foreseeable—cited “isolation or loneliness” as a reason for wanting to end their lives. For Track 1—when death is reasonably foreseeable—21.9 per cent of 15,767 patients cited isolation and loneliness.

Even higher rates were reported for feelings of being a burden, emotional distress, and loss of dignity.

LifeCanada, a national pro-life charity, has also responded to these statistics with a program to boost seniors’ sense of self-worth. The program features a 26-page pamphlet entitled “You Are Worth It!” Blooms Into Rooms volunteers took pamphlets to some of the homes and hope to distribute more next year.

“It’s a simple and yet profound resource for seniors and elderly,” said executive director Pat Wiedemer. The goal is “to remind them of the great dignity they possess, inspiring them to know their worth and value.”

Blooms into Rooms, which now operates under the umbrella of Life Compass, a north-of-Fraser life-education non-profit, also distributed 14 of the LifeCanada pamphlets to retirement homes on Holy Saturday. The group plans to distribute more next year with the assistance of the Archdiocese of Vancouver.

Wiedemer hopes the pamphlet’s “charming” comic-style artistry and clear writing about universal lessons of a life well-lived will bring joy and life to the elderly.

“It is a life-abundant antidote to the culture of death as offered in MAiD,” she said.

Vander Zalm said it’s hard to measure Blooms into Rooms’ positive impact, but anecdotal evidence suggests it certainly raised spirits among seniors.

A team of St. Luke’s parishioners visiting the Wesbrooke retirement home in Pitt Meadows reported an overwhelmingly positive response. “It is truly amazing what something as simple as a small pot of flowers can do for an entire home,” said volunteer Martha Bonnett said.

Bonnett heard how meaningful the visit was, especially for those who feel deeply alone. “Many still hold Easter close to their hearts, even when their own families have forgotten not only the significance of this sacred season, but sometimes even their own loved ones.”

At Eagle Ridge Manor in Port Moody, St. Joseph’s volunteers were greeted by an activities coordinator who presented them with a giant thank-you card signed by two dozen staff and residents.

“We could see the gratitude in the sparkle of their [residents’] eyes and the width of their smiles,” said a volunteer. “There was a lot of love in the room.”

At one Maple Ridge home, a woman was nearly brought to tears because the colour of the violets were her favourite, said Loch. Another senior was uplifted by the seniors’ interactions with the many children taking part.

Blooms into Rooms now operates under Life Compass, a north-of-Fraser non-profit, and was funded this year through a grant from the Archdiocese of Vancouver. Burnaby Lakes Nurseries provided the African violets at cost, and Art’s Nursery in Surrey provided logistical support.

B.C. Catholic contributor Terry O’Neill is co-founder and lead organizer of Blooms into Rooms.