And a second one is planned for new hospital.

By Terry O’Neill, an independent reporter who lives near Vancouver.

MAiD facility at St. Paul’s

A B.C.-government-ordered euthanasia (MAiD) facility on the downtown Vancouver campus of the Catholic-operated St. Paul’s Hospital is now fully operational.

My half-year-long investigation into the impact of the NDP government’s MAiD-imposition edict has also uncovered the fact that planning is underway for another euthanasia facility, also to be operated by the provincial government’s Vancouver Coastal Health Authority, to be forced onto the site of the new St. Paul’s on False Creek Flats, currently being built three kilometres east of the existing hospital.

Previous article: Vancouver Euthanasia Clinic Imposed on Catholic Hospital (Link).

As well, I have learned that Vancouver Coastal is now operating MAiD rooms in the same buildings that house two Catholic-run hospices in Vancouver, and that the hospices were powerless to block them.

All those Catholic facilities are operated by Providence Health Care, which is controlled by the Archdiocese of Vancouver. Providence has long maintained pro-life policies which prohibit abortions and euthanasia from being performed on its premises.

Alex Schadenberg

The imposition of MAiD units alongside Catholic facilities has left Alex Schadenberg, executive director of the Euthanasia Prevention Coalition, with deep concerns.

“This is incredibly sad news,” Schadenberg said 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 St. Paul’s site in November 2023 in response to relentless death-on-demand activism and mainstream media pressure.

The utilitarian-looking structure, which Vancouver Coastal built at an undisclosed cost, is sited in an interior courtyard of St. Paul’s, which was founded 131 years ago by the Sisters of Providence.

The laneway-home-sized structure opened on January 6 of this year, a Vancouver Coastal spokesperson said 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 MAiD facility is attached directly to courtyard-facing exterior wall of the western section of the hospital’s Providence Building. Public access to the facility from the courtyard is blocked by a gate and a two-metre-high, black chain-link fence.

Pedestrians using the nearby Thurlow Street entrance to the hospital are given no hint of what the green-metal-clad facility is used for, although the fence, multiple security cameras, and floodlight fixtures suggest something needing high security.

Inside the hospital, patients and families walking through a ground-floor corridor would have no idea of what is behind a locked door with a sign reading: “Shoreline Space. Vancouver Coastal Health.”

The current St. Paul’s will close in a few years, but MAiD will apparently continue on the campus of the new hospital.

Vancouver Coastal emails, which I obtained through a freedom-of-information application, show that the health authority has now launched a planning process to insert a euthanasia facility at the new St. Paul’s, which is currently undergoing finishing work in advance of its planned opening in 2027.

No agency—the B.C. government, the Ministry of Health, Vancouver Coastal Health, Providence Health, or the Archdiocese of Vancouver—has announced 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 Vancouver Coastal Health’s “Assisted Dying Program,” 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 as follows:

• Internal 2800 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 I received in response to my FOI request were almost completed redacted, but one, entitled “Future Planning: MAiD spaces,” was sent by Vancouver Coastal’s Nina Dhaliwal, a “senior project manager,” 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 specifically mention the new St. Paul’s, Vancouver Coastal released it to me in response to a request for the texts of communications regarding the possible construction of a MAiD unit at the new hospital.

Neither Vancouver Coastal nor Providence Health has commented in response to questions about MAiD facilities at the new and old St. Paul’s.

Grafeneck, May 2024.

On issue of MAiD being forced into areas operated by Christian facilities, Schadenberg said the situation reminds him of the Nazis’ 1939 conversion of a Lutheran-run care home at Grafeneck, Germany, into a euthanasia facility for physically and mentally disabled Germans.

“Sadly, it appears that history is repeating itself,” Schadenberg said. “I know it’s not an exact parallel, but I find it very upsetting.”

Providence Health’s service contract with the provincial government guarantees that it can prevent abortions and euthanasia from taking place within Providence facilities. Instead, patients seeking such procedures are discharged from Providence and transferred to a Vancouver Coastal facility.

Pro-euthanasia groups criticized the arrangement as soon as MAiD was legalized in 2016, and then ramped up pressure when, as revealed in a May 2022 B.C. Catholic story, 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 following 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 to create a “clinical space” for MAiD to be performed. The space would be staffed by Vancouver Coastal’s health-care 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 chamber was originally scheduled to open in August 2024.

Archbishop J. Michael Miller was quoted at the time as saying the directive “respects and preserves Providence’s policy of not allowing MAiD inside a Catholic health-care facility,” and the new patient-discharge and transfer protocols would be consistent with existing arrangements for transferring patients at other Providence facilities.

But that did not end the matter. In June 2024, Ms. O’Neill’s mother, Dying with Dignity Canada, and a doctor launched a lawsuit against Providence, Vancouver Coastal, and the provincial government, alleging that they had denied Ms. O’Neill her a 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 its formal response to the claim, Providence not only described the St. Paul’s arrangement, but also disclosed that, at the May’s Place and St. John hospices that it operates, “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, said Shaf Hussain, a communications officer with Providence.

St John Hospice

Hussain said in a May 30 email to me that both St. John Hospice and May’s Place Hospice are in buildings and on lands that are not owned by Providence.

“Regarding St. John Hospice: I believe the building is owned by the Sovereign Order of St. John of Jerusalem, Knights Hospitaller, the land is owned by [the University of B.C], and the whole building is leased by VCH,” Hussain said.

“Since September 2013, Providence has been operating a 14-bed hospice in the building and continues to do so. In 2021, VCH took some space in the building for its Vancouver Community palliative programming. A room in that space is used for MAiD.”

May’s Place Hospice

As for May’s Place, “Providence doesn’t own the building; we lease the space on one of the floors from its owner and operate a six-bed hospice in that space,” he said. “VCH also leases space in that building from the owner; this space, which they use for MAiD, is separate and away from our hospice operations.”

On issue of MAiD being performed adjacent to Catholic facilities, Schadenberg said the situation reminds him of the Nazis’ conversion of a Lutheran-run care home at Grafeneck, Germany, into a euthanasia facility for physically and mentally disabled Germans.

“Sadly, it appears history is repeating itself,” Schadenberg said. “I know it’s not an exact parallel, but I find it very upsetting.

Dr Will Johnston

Vancouver’s Dr. Will Johnston, who heads the Euthanasia Resistance B.C., said he believes that the B.C. government’s decision to force MAiD into previously life-affirming, medically positive spaces 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.”

Previous articles on this topic: 

• Vancouver Euthanasia Clinic Imposed on Catholic Hospital (Link).
• Euthanasia lobby pressures British Columbia government to force Catholic hospitals to provide euthanasia (Link).
• British Columbia government to build killing centre next to Catholic hospital (Link).