The Canadian Medical Association points out in their article entitled, “Canadians want end-of-life care brought out of the shadows – CMA seeks to bring finding of national dialogue to Supreme Court of Canada“ that:
— MPs from all three parties voted unanimously to pass a resolution urging creation of a panCanadian strategy on palliative care.
“This was a very positive development for palliative care,” Dr. Francescutti said. “We had been concerned that assisted death was sucking up all the attention from the crying need for palliative care in this country, and we raised this concern with a lot of MPs.”
The national dialogue focused on three main issues: advance care directives, palliative care, and physician-assisted dying.
To the provocative title of this article, I say, if they want euthanasia “brought out of the shadows” why is it cloaked in euphemisms like “terminal palliative sedation” and “medical aid in dying”? Has it occurred to them that crimes like homicide are usually performed “in the shadows” and ought not to be brought out except to prosecute the perpetrators?








The fact that 80% of doctors state that ‘euthanasia’, assisted suicide, termination, is not medical treatment is something that the media should make clear to the public. There are numerous other facts that should be similarly announced including the record of euthanasia in Europe where the law is ignored and people are terminated without consent and there is an increasing number of categories, depression for example, that qualify people for euthanasia. A full discussion on palliative care, which is badly underfunded and essentially ignored in this discussion, would show that good palliative care almost always removes the ‘request’ for euthanasia thus demonstrating that the lack of care, whether it be wanting to spend money on other things or disregard for the needy, is the most significant reason there is this push for ending someone’s life.
I am grateful there is Pro Woman Pro Life, Margaret Sommerville, Larry Worthen and The Christian medical and Dental Society, Alex Scadenberg of Euthanasia Prevention Coalition and others who are working to have the media and the public understand the full story.