RIGHT-TO-DIE IN A FIGHT WITH THE HARD RIGHT
Sad Delta Hospice battle has even included trumped-up charges of ‘cultural Marxism’
Late last year, former MLA Vicki Huntington applied to join the Delta Hospice society, an organization that was bitterly divided over the issue of medical assistance in dying.
Much to her surprise last week, the society returned her application and cheque for $10 along with those of a number of other citizens who sought to join.
Instead, the hospice board indicated that as part of its opposition to medical assistance in dying (MAID), it will ask the current membership to approve a more explicitly Christian mandate for the society.
“It has become obvious that we must return to our roots and fully arm our Christian identity,” wrote board president Angelina Ireland in a letter to the current membership.
The revised mandate would commit the society to “fulfil God’s calling” and to “function as a Christian community that furthers biblical principles governed by the Triune God,” a reference to the Trinity.
“It’s sad, what’s happened to the hospice,” said Huntington, who served as independent MLA for Delta South from 2009 to 2017, when I contacted her Tuesday. “I believe you have to respect the morals and beliefs of other people.”
She and others had sought to take back control of the society and to reunite Delta, Tsawwassen and Ladner behind a facility that was built with community donations large and small. While the takeover of the society by a narrow religious element is as sad as Huntington says, it is not without a touch of the politically grotesque.
She supplied me with a link to a speech that the hospice’s Ireland gave in the United States in March of this year to a convention of the Christian-right group Bring America Back to Life.
“I’m pro-life, pro-God and pro-gun,” Ireland began and finished with “God bless President Trump.”
She also advised the audience that the end game of the fight over the Delta hospice was “communism — cultural Marxism — the destruction of the family.”
Joining Huntington as unwitting agent of this reputed communist conspiracy is her successor in Delta South, B.C. Liberal MLA Ian Paton.
Paton put himself offside on the issue earlier this year, when he blasted Health Minister Adrian Dix for threatening to cut off provincial funding for the Delta Hospice and/or take over the facility.
The MLA accused Dix of “literally stealing assets from the people of Delta that they worked so hard for so many years.”
But under pressure from his own party, Paton retreated.
“Upon reflection I realize my comments were not worded well,” he confessed on social media.
“I acknowledge and respect the decision to ensure that all citizens are given access to medical assistance in dying. I agree that publicly funded facilities should be prepared to offer this right to their patients.”
When the issue flared up last week, Paton fired off protest letters to the society (“I call on you to reconsider the membership application refusals”) and to Dix himself.
“There is fear among many of my constituents that proposed changes to the constitution of the hospice society will cause irreparable harm to their ability to perform palliative care services in our community,” the MLA wrote the health minister.
“What, if anything, can be done to support the health needs of my constituents and ensure that membership at the Delta Hospice
Society remains open to all Delta citizens?”
The letter went out on May 27. Two days later, Dix responded by reiterating what he’d announced earlier in the year:
Come next February, the province will cut off the $1.5 million in operating funds that flow to the Delta Hospice every year via the Fraser Health region.
The health minister added a strong hint that come next year, the health region (which owns the land on which the hospice is located) will take over the facility.
“Fraser Health’s job and my job is to ensure that Delta residents continue to have access to hospice services upon the termination of the contract with the Delta Hospice society,” said Dix via a news release from his office.
“We continue to be committed to this and are working to make it happen.”
For her part, Huntington would not be surprised if a takeover were the eventual outcome. But she also told me that the fight is not over.
With the hospice board gearing up for a special meeting on June 15 to approve the revised Christian mandate, some of those who were frozen out from membership in the society are mulling a legal challenge.
On that score, board president Ireland, who ran for Maxime Bernier’s People’s Party of Canada in the last federal election, is confident.
The society has the right to turn down applications and to put a cap on total memberships.
“The membership is at the full discretion of the board of directors,” Ireland told reporter Sandor Gyarmati of the Delta Optimist.
“We have been entirely inundated with memberships. It was quite planned to completely overwhelm us. I think (they) have fairly malicious intent to come after us.”
Dix, for his part, has no intention of intervening in the membership fight. Though he sympathizes with those who would support restoration of medical assistance in dying at the hospice, he has also had enough.
“The decision to end this contract is final and will not change,” he added, indicating that so far as the provincial government is concerned, the battle of Delta is over.
The health minister added a strong hint that ... the health region will take over the facility.