Families want Canadian provinces to end MAID opt-out policy for faith-based hospitals
On the last day of Risha Golby’s life, she was kicked out of the room at Vancouver’s St. Paul’s Hospital that had been her home for six weeks.
The room where her daughter’s pictures hung on the walls, and where she found relative comfort during treatment for pancreatic cancer.
Golby, 47, was placed in an ambulance and driven over bumpy roads to an outpatient facility on the grounds of Vancouver General Hospital. Her family says each step of the transfer caused her pain.
“They didn’t even have a bed for him to lie down on. So, we tried our best to fit him in a La-Z-Boy recliner,” said Ashley Freeman, Golby’s younger sister.
A few minutes after the family placed Golby in the recliner and said goodbye, a doctor gave her medical assistance in dying (MAID), and she was gone. The family was reportedly asked to vacate the room as it needed to be cleaned for another patient.
“It’s the worst day of your life, watching your sister die. And this policy has made it even worse, causing unnecessary pain, unnecessary suffering to the patient, their family members, the entire health care team trying to care for the patient,” Freeman said.
Following Golby’s death in 2022, a clinical location operated by Vancouver Coastal Health was built adjacent to St. Paul’s and is connected to the hospital by a corridor so that patients do not have to be transferred elsewhere by ambulance. But advocates say that’s not good enough.
Policy does not prolong or hasten death: St. Paul
A spokesperson for Providence Health Care, the operator of St. Paul’s Hospital, did not comment on the case for privacy reasons, but said the MAID policy is consistent with the Catholic operator’s core values.
Spokesman Shaif Hussain wrote, “Providence has a long-standing ethical tradition of compassionate care that neither prolongs nor hastens death, rooted in the belief that all life is sacred and in the dignity of the person.”
The BC government said at the time that, while faith-based organizations can choose not to offer MAID services at their facilities, they are expected to work with health officials to ensure that this option is available to patients who choose it.
Dying with Dignity Canada says more than 100 forced transfers occur per year across the country. According to court records, a Vancouver-baSed was at the doctor 44 patients were forced to relocate between 2016 and July 2025.
Provinces can legislate whether religious hospitals can prohibit MAID events on their premises, and Quebec is the only province that does not allow faith-based institutions to opt out of MAID performances.
in 2024 The Roman Catholic Archbishop of Montreal and the Archdiocese of Montreal took the issue to court.. He filed a legal challenge arguing that Quebec’s end-of-life law violates religious freedom.
That case is still before the courts.
“Individuals have Charter rights. But institutions don’t. And in my view, an institution should not be able to impose its values on people who don’t share those values,” said Daphne Gilbert, a law professor at the University of Ottawa and vice-president of Dying with Dignity Canada.
Ottawa man treated like ‘piece of trash’
Jim McCaffrey, 87, spent four months at Bruyere Health Elisabeth-Bruyere Hospital in Ottawa. He had throat cancer and it eventually progressed.
To receive MAID, he had to transfer to the Civic Campus of the Ottawa Hospital. His wife Helen says that on the day the incident was to take place, the ambulance arrived late.
“We waited two hours and Jim kept saying to me, ‘Helen, are they here yet? Are they here yet?'” Helen McCaffrey said in an interview with CBC News.
She says her husband was agitated and needed more and more medication to calm him down.
The last few hours of Jim’s life were so painful, Helen McCaffrey spent two years undergoing grief therapy to deal with her guilt.
“She just had a zest for life. And I’m sorry it was so sad for her. Really, she should have been treated like a piece of trash. It was horrible, horrible,” McCaffrey said.
Bruyer Health, which runs the hospital, was saddened to hear about McCaffrey’s experience.
“This does not reflect the experience we want for someone we care about,” an unnamed spokesperson wrote in an email. He said Bruyer Health supports its patients in a compassionate manner and its position on MAID is consistent with its responsibilities and values as a Catholic health care institution.
MAID law is being fought
Gilbert says there are more than 100 faith-based health facilities in Canada with about 13,000 beds, with each province handling them differently.
She says most are run by the Catholic Church, with the archbishop of the diocese in which the hospital is located deciding what type of care can and cannot be provided in those institutions.
B.C.’s Supreme Court will hear a case asking whether publicly funded faith-based hospitals should be allowed to prevent patients from receiving medical aid in dying, known as MAID. The challenge, based on Charter rights, has been brought by the advocacy organization Dying with Dignity Canada and the parents of Samantha O’Neill, a Vancouver woman who was forced to leave the hospital to access MAID.
Gilbert says patients are unable to access MAID, abortion or gender-affirming care at those hospitals.
“A lot of places don’t offer that option. A lot of cities, faith-based hospitals, are the only game in town. And so people are having to leave their city, their home base, to get care,” Gilbert said.
The number of hospital beds occupied by faith-based facilities continues to increase across Canada. Gilbert says Alberta has the most faith-based hospitals in the country.
Covenant Health runs those facilities, and the organization is currently expanding capacity at both the Gray Nuns and Misericordia hospitals in Edmonton, adding 700 more beds.
A spokesperson for Covenant Health said that although MAID is not administered at its properties, patients receive assistance throughout the process.
“Convent Health is committed to providing compassionate, respectful care at every step of that journey,” the spokesperson said in an email. “This approach reflects our commitment to compassionate care, patient rights and transparency while respecting our faith-based mission.”
The family of a Vancouver woman who was forced to transfer hospitals before receiving medical assistance in dying (MAID) is suing the BC government and Providence Health Care, claiming the Catholic organization’s ban on MAID in its health facilities violates patients’ charter rights.
The issue of whether faith-based hospitals can ban MAID is also before the Supreme Court of British Columbia.
case brought By the family of Samantha O’Neill who died in 2023.
The 34-year-old man was suffering from stage 4 cervical cancer and was taken by ambulance from St. Paul’s Hospital to a hospice administered by Vancouver Coastal Health to receive MAID.
O’Neill’s family says the hospital was 25 minutes away and their daughter was in extreme pain. She was heavily sedated and never regained consciousness, preventing her loved ones from getting a chance to say goodbye.
Freeman, whose sister Golby went through the same thing, hopes O’Neill’s case will force provinces to change the law when it comes to MAID.
Freeman said, “What I don’t accept is that an institution, a publicly funded institution, was allowed to deny my sister her right to a dignified death. And to me that is indefensible, and it needs to change.”
