iN DISCUSSION: Debate over access to MAID highlighted in lawsuit against BC hospital

This is where cold hard facts give way to the hottest of takes, mostly mine I suppose. I’m the editor, Marshall Jones.

Want to include yours? Listen, this isn’t the comment section, this isn’t social media. Discussion and debate requires context and a wee bit of bravery — we need your name and where you’re writing from. Include it in your account or email me anytime.

What if a hospital has moral objection to MAID?

Polls consistently show broad support for Medical Assistance in Dying since it was enabled by law in 2016.

Some folks have religious objections to the practice, which is understandable. They won’t be engaging a physician to end their life, presumably.

But what if it’s the physician who has a religious objection? What if an entire hospital held that objection?

Those are the tensions a court in Vancouver is wrestling with. A Catholic hospital refused MAID to a patient. That patient is now suing for an equal right among British Columbians to access the service.

It’s an interesting discussion and debate we must wrestle with. Can we compel someone to act against their religious objections? Should we continue to fund religious-based hospitals that refuse services under the health regime?

What do you think? Email me at mjones@infonews.ca.

Marshall Jones

Managing Editor

Do you support the MLAs and MPs who abandoned the parties that got them elected?

And just like that — poof — the Liberals have a majority in Parliament.

They achieved it, as we know, by Conservative MPs leaving their party to join Prime Minister Mark Carney’s Liberals. (They’re almost the same party now, I’m not sure what the hubbub is.)

Why did they cross the floor? There’s plenty of speculation that they were enticed, lured, baited, perhaps. The Conservatives have lit their collective heads on fire over this, though of course none complained when a Liberal crossed to join Stephen Harper’s Conservatives.

Hypocrisy from both parties aside, our elected representatives are forcing us to contend with the concept of floor crossers like never before.

MLAs Tara Armstrong and Amelia Boultbee both quit within months the BC Conservative Party that got them elected. Armstrong will be recalled over it. Boultbee said on social media she plans to remain an independent, may have been her strategy all along.

I wrote here once that these activities should require a byelection. My thoughts have shifted after conversations with some of our awesome readers.

MPs and MLAs typically have very little power within their own parties. They can get run over quickly and swept up by the ideologies and power of the leader.

Crossing the floor or sitting as an independent is one of the few tools at their disposal, a nuclear-option for sure, since they’re unlikely to get elected, nor welcomed back.

It’s only by custom that we tend to vote for leaders and parties and not individual candidates themselves. I have to remind people of this folly every election, but by then the parties have already chosen their candidates and it’s too late.

So, the question: Do you support the MLAs and MPs who abandoned the parties that got them elected? Should they be required to win their seat on their own or should they be rewarded for their independence?

Email me at mjones@infonews.ca.

Marshall Jones

Managing Editor

It’s time to fight the BC rat invasion

Look, I’m an Alberta refugee, I was born with an innate disgust of rats. As in, I can’t really watch and enjoy the Disney movie Ratatouille. So in 2012 when my wife noticed the grapevine overhanging a pergola on our house suddenly moved, we fled.

I’ve been banging this drum every since.

I asked a lot of people at that time and no one had heard of rats around here. A friend of mine said he had to deal with rats in a trailer park maybe a year or two before. If they were here before then, they were rare.

Since then we have tracked their spread throughout the Okanagan, to Kamloops and the Kootenays. I’m not pretending we were the first, nor that we were the only ones reporting this.

But I have been calling for a more regional strategy for years. Right now, it’s a private property issue, local governments only get involved if rats are on their own property.

We’re on our own.

This week, Shannon Ainslie tells us the problem is growing so great, a team of entrepreneurs from Vernon have learned to specialize. Their trick is working to keep rats out of homes. That really doesn’t help reduce or eliminate the problem.

I don’t get the hesitance and reluctance.

We have addled goose eggs for a generation because they’re a nuisance. We employ someone to harvest milfoil from Okanagan lake with a tractor. We hire goat herds to eat poison ivy, use dogs and raptors to keep airports clear of birds, destroy entire flocks at risk of disease, engage three levels of government to protect against invasive mussels.

Not a thing about rats.

Am I the only one with my hair on fire about this? Email me at mjones@infonews.ca.

Marshall Jones

Managing Editor

iN RESPONSE

iN RESPONSE to Friday’s newsletter opinion-editorial about MAID and religion

I don’t think we can compel someone to do something that’s against their religious beliefs, but having said that, I don’t believe they should be fully funded if they are not willing to fully serve the public.
I also think hospitals that are not willing to allow the MAID practice should also make it public so that patients aren’t going there thinking that they will be able to receive MAID only to find out that they cannot.

— Tracy Higgins via email

Being of sound mind and body now, at the age of 79, I would like to be able to register for MAID now so that when I need it, it is in place.

— Konnie Kranenburg via email

Once again you have posed two interesting questions. One is dammed if they do and dammed if they don’t. In regards to medical professionals denying MAID, whatever happened to the Hippocratic Oath. Secondly, what happened to rights and freedoms as it pertains to health professionals. In regards to religious hospitals not allowing MAID, why use these hospitals for MAID, if these hospitals don’t allow the practice. I am imagining that the religious congregation founding the hospital, clearly stated in a contract that life in all its conditions and forms was to be protected at all times. This being done when the hospital was handed over to the province. Do the residents of BC wish to become another Quebec?

— Lawrence Beaton via email

Hospitals if they are funded by taxes paid by all should be open for all health related issues regardless of someone’s religious take.
This should not even be debatable.
This person died with needless pain. Back in the 70s my father laid in a hospital for 30 horrible painful day’s and if MAID would have been available he would not have suffered to the point I thought of putting him out of his misery myself and live with the consequences.
We would never just leave animals to die that way. We ARE an animal and now have the means to alleviate pain in the final stages of life. Let the science work. If your religion says no to it, then don’t do it. Religious doctors – get a new profession. Don’t affect everyone else. (Remember if God is in charge of all things he would have stopped this long ago)

— Diane Courneyeur via email

No to compelling a religious hospital to act against its beliefs, it’s bad enough that many doctors ignore or act against the Hippocratic Oath to do no harm.
Anyone suing a Catholic or religious hospital should have their suit dismissed in cases of attempting to obtain objectionable services.
Doctors have too much power and too little accountability.

— Patrick Longworth via email

iN RESPONSE to Wednesday’s newsletter opinion-editorial on the federal government’s new majority

Obviously many people vote for a party rather than a candidate but to me it’s more important to vote for a person who you think will do the best they can with your interests in mind. If that means changing parties because those parties policies are more in line with what they want to accomplish on their constituents behalf, than, so be it. May work, may not but they may not do you much good in opposition either. Which is more likely? There’s always another election coming. :)

— Warren Caruk via email

I for one have never voted for a candidate because of their leader.
I reluctantly agree that candidates are limited in their tools of power against their party but betraying their voters is a bad move whether done for principle or advantage.
If a candidate is feeling unheard etc. they can resign, call out their leader or party publicly or anonymously or organize a grassroots revolt etc.
There are no elected officials that I will vote for at next elections but indeed I will vote to clean house.

— Patrick Longworth via email

Floor crossings are part of the current system and so good on Liberals for using it to their advantage. That being said, I personally feel that floor crossings take advantage of what a voter intended. Hence, a byelection should be triggered, not a floor crossing, in the future. Floor crossings feel slimy. Probably because they have an element of backdoor promises, and not promises that the voter necessarily gave their vote for.

— Peter Boyd via email

You have posed an interesting question. MPs or MLAs who walk should be forced to undergo another election or byelection, while a number of the electorate may approve of the move to another party, the majority of the electorate will not approve of the move. Why bother voting, if this will continue to take place. Other points could be made as well, but this will be enough for now.

— Lawrence Beaton via email

Floor crossers should be forced into a byelection right away. People vote to support a party, our vote is supposed to count! If not why even vote?

— William Balyx via email

iN RESPONSE to Monday’s newsletter opinion-editorial on BC’s rat problem

There are rats. They are everywhere. We had some in our yard so we set the live trap. We found it calmly washing it’s face and snacking on the bait. We drove out to Cinnamon Ridge and released it. It went from calm to unguided missile in 0.5 seconds. It ran from the trap, onto a large rock, and leapt straight into the darkness. I’ve no idea what kind of landing it made. I’m sure it became food for something else.
Your newsletter opened with a story of an albino squirrel. Do you know the difference between squirrels and rats? PR. You think the rat with the fuzzy ears and tail is cute.
Why so much hate for Norwegian Hampsters?

— Grant Fraser via email

I have lived in the Okanagan since 1972, so I have seem many changes. Ten years ago when I lived in Penticton near the river channel and the golf course, I discovered a huge rat in my outside shed. This was a townhouse unit and my shed was attached to the one next door. I had a cat. This cat caught caught the rat, but I wanted to find out what attracted the rat to my house. As I am very anal, I knew there was nothing in my shed to attract the rat.
So I went to my neighbour and looked into their shed. Sure enough, this rat was getting into their garbage bags they were storing until garbage day.
I kept that dead rat and put it on top of their garbage to show them. The problem got solved for the both of us.
What people don’t seem to get is that rats, like mice, multiply like crazy so if you see one, you need to set traps for the partner ASAP.
Cleanliness is the answer, and persistence.

— Sabina Notz via email

Sport of stabbing people safer than you’d think at Okanagan’s only fencing club

Beairsto school had a fencing club for years. My daughter fenced. They had a very competitive group who traveled all across Canada to compete.