Forwarded via email;
The Ontario College of Physicians and surgeons has posted a draft policy that has the potential to have a serious adverse impact on the exercise of freedom of conscience by physicians. It appears that this policy was posted on 26 June, 2008, without a news release to announce it. The deadline for responses is 15 August, 2008. I learned of this today as a result of a call from a concerned physician.
I will be e-mailing and faxing the College to ask that the deadline be extended, as most of the people most likely to be affected are probably unaware of this. It is unreasonable to post such an important document at the beginning of summer, without an announcement, and allow only six weeks for responses. The College could not have been unaware that groups like Canadian Physicians for Life would want to review and comment on the document.
From the news release;
The document responds to legislative changes, which, according to the Chair of the Ontario Human Rights Tribunal, will see a twenty-fold increase in hearings before the Tribunal – from 150 to 3,000 cases per year.
According to the College, the Tribunal may take action against a physician who refuses to provide or refer for procedures that he finds morally objectionable. The College strongly suggests that the physician’s freedom of conscience and religion will be ignored because “there is no defence for refusing to provide a service” in such circumstances.
In addition to the possibility of prosecution by the Human Rights Tribunal, the College states that it will consider the Human Rights Code in adjudicating complaints of professional misconduct, even though the College admits that it lacks the expertise and authority in human rights.
U vil doo vat vee say.
Absolutely typical of our politically correct, moral pygmy, political and professional overlords: treat us like mushrooms. Keep us in the dark and feed us s**t.
One asks, “Who do these people think they are?” The Emperor or, these days, more likely an Empress. We know they have no clothes but they truly believe they’re decked out in the best and know what’s best for the rest of us. With impunity, and outside the rules, these megalomaniacs make new guidelines and policies—nooses for nonconformists—and there’s no argument allowed. Any dissent, and, like despots of old, they have a whole dungeon full of retributions.
Honestly, Canada’s becoming a gulag. Its citizens are treated like serfs who are supposed to share one brain. Any deviation and we’re outed by spies or by being forced to conform against our consciences, and then, if not, punished by the PC police, which every profession appears to have these days: tattle taling allowed, indeed, encouraged, reprimands, suspensions with loss of pay, fines, stigmatization, blacklisting, relocation, demotion, and maybe even the loss of one’s job. The process is the punishment, like the modus operandi of the HRCs: guilt is assumed, hearings are carried out in camera, the PC enforcer is prosecutor, jury, and judge, and there’s no appeal. Usually the victim is also warned that the process—the torture—is confidential. (I notice that Ezra Levant ignores that fiat and lets the world know!)
The biggest weapon of these gulags is the climate of fear spread abroad by the PC apparatchiks, which invariably includes the functionaries in both the unions and professional organizations, the very groups the professional (who’s paid them a bundle) should be able to rely on for support. A non compliant professional is caught between a rock and a very hard place.
Godspeed to the courageous and principled Physicians for Life and any other physicians who still take the Hyppocratic Oath—“an oath traditionally taken by physicians pertaining to the ethical practice of medicine”—with any seriousness. And God help the rest of us, who have to rely on the vultures of the medical profession. We’re more vulnerable by the minute.
By the way, don’t we have ‘special deals’ made with Muslims who refuse to take dogs in their taxis, who refuse to handle pork in the supermarket checkout?
I might be wrong, so before this is commented on as ‘fact’ – I’ll have to check – and don’t have the time, myself, to do so at the moment.
Don’t know about the rest of the country but here in Ontario there are many Roman Catholic funded hospitals that refuse to perform abortions. Read between the lines here and I believe that is one of the several reasons for the HRC to “expand their mandate”.
If so, there will literally be shutdowns of many hospitals and a further shortage of physicans who will have either been suspended or just move offshore to practice their art.
Lookout- A very well thought out post. Your passion is clearly evident.
Maybe the reason that the inventor of the X-Ray didn`t profit from it is that by the time he should have been applying for a patent, his hands and other parts of the body were nearly destroyed from exposure to the rays. At least that what I recall when I read Dr. Röentgen`s story many years ago.
The Doc did receive the Nobel Prize. I believe the fellow who profited the most from the X-Ray was Thomas Alva Edison, who developed his own x-ray tube, and who knew how to file a patent properly. Good old Yankee ingenuity! In any event, I can invent a vehicle that takes me to the moon and back in 10 minutes, and for ten bucks. If nobody wants to buy it, it`s worthless!!
Very sneaky of them.
You realize this means government funded clitorectemies.
Ian
Malcom Cross name those hospitals.
I call BS.
DDT, try St. Joseph’s in Hamilton. Bet you a dollar they won’t do abortions.
Anyway, this is just another flexing of the socialist muscles. Doctors are not free human beings, they are a resource owned by the State.
Remember kids, in Canada health care is a right, not a service!
Just remember one thing about this kind of thinking and these types of people, history shows that eventually they wind up hanging from light posts.
I should have googled before I wrote.
I was wrong.
Interesting point though, search abortion at St. Joes in Hamiton and the only answer returned is “Islam”. One of those conflicting rights issues that makes leftard’s heads expload.
Until the one payer system is changed doctors have 2 choices, be a slave to the state or go south.
Oh just farking wonderful, those marxist pie holes have managed to give themselves absolute power over the Medical Profession. Oh joy, can we say mass sex changes on the taxpayers’ dime.
The scary part is they aren’t qualified to arbitrate a fight between two ants, yet the Province has given them unlimited power to destroy society.
Vote liberal and watch Canada die by tribunal.
well this is one way to get around the problem female circumcision and take one step closer to sharia.
DDT
As previously advised, St. Joseph’s Hospital in Hamilton Ont. Also check out St. Mary’s Hospital in Kitchener Ont. My wife, who sadly is at work right now, has been employed in the medical field for over 34 years. If she were here, she could rattle off a slew of them in Ontario for you.
There are many doctors who will not refer or perform abortions in our city as they are of the RC faith and don’t believe in it.
I don’t know what province you reside in but I suggest you check it out. It’s not a widely known thing, only to those who want an abortion.
That’s OK, because since we’re over-run with doctors anywa….. oh, wait a moment.
Well, it’s still OK because it’s not like there’s anywhere else they can go and earn the same (or more) money without having to go overse….. oh, wait a moment.
This might not be a good idea.
As a medical student, I found this of interest and perused it briefly.
I didn’t find anything in there that was objectionable, per se. I believe this is more or less what is already in the guidelines in other jurisdictions.
For example: I am pro-life. The guidelines in my province state that while I do not have to refer someone to an abortionist if I object to it on moral or religious grounds, I am required to refer them to a physician who will.
Honestly, I am not entirely happy with this arrangement in and of itself, but even if I didn’t give the referral to another physician, the patient would go to another physician anyway.
This doesn’t seem like anything new.
Well Dante, I’m not the brightest light on the tree but the way I see it the medical profession will be subject to sanctions by the Human Rights Commission that do not operate on rules of evidence and consider the respondent to be presumed guilty unless they deem otherwise.In other words, they will be making arbitrary decisions about medical practices and procedures they no nothing about. Notweithstanding that, the bigger issue is one of freedom to practice your conscience.
Thanks Kate
Everytime an American says “free healthcare” to me in the US, I launch about it.
More ammo.
Excellent.
“Bet you a dollar they won’t do abortions.”
Bet you a dollar someone at the same hospital is allowed to perform tubal ligation.
RP.
Nope. My wife had one done and she couldn’t get the surgery at St. Josephs Healthcare in Hamilton Ont. They won’t do them there.
She had to go to McMaster Medical Centre to have it performed.
how about retro-active abortion. can also do retroactive without the hyphen. i hope this is better than a one- liner.
Dante
Just wait until you refuse to take on a patient , just because they are a pain in the ass and you dont like them. They also just happen to be lesbian , gay , muslim , black or whatever. They lodge a complaint that you are discriminating with the HRC. Understand that the punishment is the process. Win or lose…. you lose !
Dante, as a Medical school professor, allow me to summarize this. First, the key statement:
Physicians should be aware that decisions to restrict medical services offered, to accept individuals as patients or to end physician-patient relationships that are based on moral or religious belief may contravene the Code, and/or constitute professional misconduct.
They are not talking about referring patients to another doctor, they are saying that your refusal to do what the patient wants is misconduct. If the patient files a complaint to the College, they will remove your license to practice. This is unlike anything in the current Canadian Code of Ethics.
Dante, this means they will excommunicate you if you refuse to perform a clitoridectomy on a healthy 12 y.o. Somali girl who, surrounded by her parents, tells you that “it hurts terribly” and starts crying.
As a physician, you will often have to defend your authority. Your decisions should be evidence-based; you should refuse to let bureaucrats and ideologues control you. Kate and others want to turn this into a right-vs-left issue. In fact, it is a freedom-vs-submission issue.
“Raving Papist” said: “Bet you a dollar someone at the same hospital is allowed to perform tubal ligation.”
Your point would be what, exactly? The Ontario College of Physicians and Surgeons is responding to legislation that effectively strips the legal right to follow one’s conscience as a physician, and all you’ve got is this feeble snark?
WTF are you thinking? How’d you like to see euthanasia for the elderly become a government mandated program, eh? Your doctor gets to pull the trigger or go to jail. How’d that be?
Or closer to home, mandatory vaccination against cervical cancer for little girls. Brand new medicine, unknown side effects, YOUR kid gets to be a guinea pig and YOUR doctor will give the shot or go-to-jail.
You like that?
Hanging from lampposts? I bet you dream of that every night, W Can. Let’s all trot out our favorite Stalinist or Maoist nightmares now so we can play the beleagured maiden of freedom and virtue in peril.
the OHRC has already ruled against a surgeon who refused to do a trany. he repeatedly explained that he did not have the experience or knowledge to perform such surgery. OHRC dinged him anyway. i can see this starting an exodus of doctors in short order. thanks to barbara hall who also recommended in a report that sharia law be adopted in ontario.
Manny wrote, “As a physician, you will often have to defend your authority. Your decisions should be evidence-based; you should refuse to let bureaucrats and ideologues control you . . . it is a freedom-vs-submission issue.”
Teachers have been there for over a decade. E.g., These days, WHAT authority? And evidence is often overlooked. Refusing to be controlled–the whole system’s built on that–can be very costly: the discipline process for blatant (versus passive, looking over one’s shoulder) non compliance is the punishment.
The Education Act clearly puts teachers under the authority of the principals who are “agents [enforcers] of the board”. Not submitting is not easy. As I’ve said before, the whole system’s a gulag. It looks like doctors are being included too. (How about the one hauled before an HRC because he wouldn’t perform labiaplasty on a transgendered person? The doctor made the fair professional assessment that although he was an expert at this procedure on female patients, he had no experience with transgendered persons. He’s in the midst of the HRC torture, and spending $ tens of thousands of his own to try to re-establish the professional authority he, mistakenly, thought he had.)
Governments at all levels in this country have turned into vengeful monsters. If they aren’t persecuting enough victims, they make up new rules to ensure that established practice becomes a transgression. It’s hard for the normal mortal to keep a step ahead of the thought police–who have power to actually inflict harm.
And most Canadians are still sleeping.
Manny,
Current guidelines state that:
Under the Canadian Criminal Code, the excision, infibulation and mutilation, in whole or in part, of the labia majora, labia minora or clitoris of a person (with certain exceptions) is categorized as aggravated assault.
The performance of any of the procedures of female circumcision, excision or infibulation by a physician who is licensed in Ontario will be regarded as professional misconduct.
A physician who is requested to perform any of these procedures must decline to do so and must refuse to refer the matter to any other person.
Dante,
Your naivete is rather sweet, but it is also disquieting.
When I started my medical training some decades ago, abortion was every bit as illegal as female circumcision is now. It was expected (again, “with certain exceptions”) that we would neither perform abortions ourselves nor refer our patients to others who would perform them. I couldn’t imagine then that I’d ever see the day when my position as a clinical faculty member in a school of medicine – and even my licensure – would be at risk because of my unwillingness to make abortion referrals. Laws change.
I hope to have retired before “services” such as embryonic stem cell therapy, assisted suicide, euthanasia and/or female circumcision – to name just a few – become interventions that physicians are obliged to facilitate. However, I am deeply concerned for some of my current students and residents who are already suffering from the moral residue of having to compromise their personal integrity in the context of their training. Beyond “not entirely happy”, they are profoundly troubled.
Although it would be very difficult to quatify, I have anecdotal evidence of at least six residents currently in Royal College programs who had planned to do Family Medicine, until this issue stopped them in their tracks. Instead, they have chosen to avoid the abortion referral dilemma – and the militantly pro-choice atmosphere in some Family Medicine training units – by choosing specialties in which the issue is unlikely to arise.
I wish you well in your studies. May you always be permitted to practice with integrity and compassion, without having to leave Canada to do so.
…difficult to quantify… (old eyes…)
Under socialism you are not allowed to have a personal conscience only that which is ordained by the State.
This reminds me somewhat of the German Employment Bureau refusing to pay unemployment insurance to a waitress because there were public service jobs available as legal prostitutes.
They say that Church and State should be keptseparate. But if the State becomes your religion it gives the atheists an undeserved preponderance!
My husband is a pediatrician, and I made him read this post. He was on the phone for quite a while with Physicians for Life and with the CPSO. Physicians for Life has now issued a statement and offically asked that this be postponed until proper consultation.
After reading the document, the difficult part, to me, comes not with the termination of the doctor/patient relationship that as being debated above, but the part on the bottom of page 4 that says that religion can play no part in refusing to perform certain services.
I won’t go into a lot of detail, but the morning after pill, when you are the only physician working in a small hospital, is a typical example. Some things can’t be referred away. You can’t just say, “I won’t do it, but I’ll refer you to someone else” when there is no one else.
It’s one thing in Toronto. It’s another thing in small town Ontario.
And, ironically, small town Ontario is where the shortage of doctors lie. Can you imagine what would happen if one of the few doctors actually had to quit because they refused to prescribe the birth control pill to a 13-year-old, or the morning after pill, or to perform a D&C? The town would be up in arms because they know they need their doctors.
I think this will backfire on the CPSO. Unfortunately, by that time we may have lost too many good physicians.
In Canada the medical profession has been reduced to nothing more than a bunch of Civil Servants.
I hark back to many years ago when a friend of mine, a medical doctor, fled Czechoslovakia and settled in Canada.(Prague Spring) He claimed that he was treated as an employee of the State and made the equivalent of some $68.00 a month. There was no incentive to excel as it would get him nowhere.
When the State controls medical care, they will ultimately control your body and mind.
I find this very, very scary indeed.
Dante notes…
Under the Canadian Criminal Code, the excision, infibulation and mutilation, in whole or in part, of the labia majora, labia minora or clitoris of a person (with certain exceptions) is categorized as aggravated assault.
well dante we also have charter rights such as freedom of speech. we also have laws for defamation and libel. so far these laws have been circumvented by the HRC’s with little impunity. this is crazy to the extreme. these so called HR commissions are above the law as they have so aptly demonstrated.
What you’re looking at here is Barbara Hall “growing her business”. In commerce that means increasing sales and profit, in bureaucracy it means expanding your caseload, your budget and the body count in your department.
She wants to be a Big Dawg in the provincial hierarchy, maybe stretch out to be Premier or Prime Minister some day. Problem is, she’s stuck with this this nag of an OHRC that just had to take a dive on a high profile case. They probably stuck her there because they think she’s an NDP idiot, what harm could she do there, right? But Barbara has ambition!
She’s putting some new shoes on the old horse and heading out on the warpath. Human rights be damned, Barb’s going to go collect a whole bunch of doctor scalps and get back in the political game.
You can see why some of us knuckle dragging rednecks in the medical biz might hold a somewhat skeptical view of this whole human rights business. It seems like a bad idea, know what I mean?
I wonder when the College plans on updating its ‘Past Findings’ records on Dr. Charles Smith?
http://www.cpso.on.ca/Doctor_Search/findings.asp?Type=ADV&intCurrentPage=2&sNameRefNo=0026988&iCPSO=31811
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Randal_Smith
Canada has too many doctors any way we need to get rid of some of them.
Arg,
On page 5 of the draft policy document, the CPSO notes certain general principles that the courts have articulated, in particular:
“There is no hierarchy of rights in the Charter; freedom of religion and conscience, and equality rights are of equal importance…” and “The right to freedom of religion is not unlimited…”
I’d really like to see legal commentary on the intersection of these two principles, because their comparison implies that equality rights are limited. Now, this is only sensible, but this is NOT what is going on.
This is the big push for social conformity to full blown cultural Marxism. The third wave to overturn all individual principle into conformity with secular absolutism. In the process destroying all individual civil liberties. It would be like declaring the war measures act. Only your overturning the social order by court fiat. This is a full out purge like any banana Republic. Teachers will be next , than civil servants (You would be amazed at how many are not neo-Marxist) finally a strike at Parliaments legitimacy. Just watch & see. In the end the Family will be sundered. The State will call the shots, even to what we think. Slaves.
The Ontario college seems to be one of the most repressive in the country and it doesn’t surprise me that they are equating failure to be politically correct with professional misconduct. The BC College of Physicians hasn’t yet gone down this road. In fact Section 50 of the BC Medical Practitioners Act explicitly prevents physicians convicted of an indictable political offence from losing their license to practice.
The “offences” that the CPSO is saying will result in loss of licensure are political offences. This policy is one of the most assinine I have yet seen proposed by a medical regulatory body (but then again they are based in Ontario so perhaps I shouldn’t be surprised).
Every physician already knows under what circumstances they have a duty to treat people whom they normally wouldn’t allow within a 100 yards of their office and when they can refuse to accept people as patients. When I work in a walkin clinic or a hospital I have an obligation to see everyone. I provide these patients with appropriate medical care which may include referring women to have abortions. When I see a woman who can’t remember when her last period was and who is pregnant but can remember she has been shooting heroin and snorting methamphetamine for the last 6 months I don’t have any hesitation in referring her to an abortion clinic. The existence of large numbers of masochistic wannabe parents who want to try to bring up her brain damaged progeny doesn’t sway my decision. I only regret I can’t ask for her tubes to be tied at the same time she has her pregnancy termination.
My private practice has always been closed which means that I accept only who I want into it. To make it easy to fire patients I have them sign agreements stipulating how they should behave if they are on chronic narcotics. I document everything in detail should there every be a problem with patients I have discharged from my practice disputing their departure — there hasn’t been.
When I last looked almost all of the practices in BC were closed which means that one doesn’t get in as a new patient unless an existing patient dies or ones receptionist approves of someone and brings them into the practice. Where I work now there is a 3-4 hour wait to see a physician at a walkin clinic, that is if one is one of the lucky people who get there early enough to make it into the group of people who will be seen that day. I get asked about 10 times/day if I’m taking new patients which I have to always answer no to. People with significant medical conditions shouldn’t be recieving the major part of their care through a walkin clinic, but that is what I see daily. I don’t know if the situation outside of major urban areas in Ontario is the same as in BC, but I’d be very surprised if it was different. Perhaps the CPSO could devote some time to figuring out how to get medical care to people who don’t have it now rather than trying to come up with new innovative ways of removing the licensure of physicians who don’t meet absurd standards of political correctness.
Dante, about labioplasty in Canada, this is why I had her say that “it hurts terribly”. Intractable pain is an indication for surgical amputation. Will you do it? The Ontario College says you must or they will pull your license. Is this becoming clearer?
DDT – try St. Joseph’s health Care in Toronto. Having been on the senior leadership team til only 12 months ago I will tell you UNEQUIVOCALLY that they and their sister hospital St Michaels, will not perform abortions.
I read this this morning in the National Post and felt an immediate sense of foreboding and outrage. Let’s not kid ourselves. We all know where this is heading. The scions of political correctness will take freedom of conscience from the individual and replace it with state mandated goodthink. Anyone doubting where this leads should read “Into that Darkness” by Gita Sereny, interviews with the commandant of Treblinka before his execution.
Abortion is the tip of the iceberg. Euthenasia, female circumcision, infanticide, forced sterilization, eugenics, confinement in psychiatric institutions for “failure to recognize socialist reality” — these are all abuses of the medical system of which the state is fully capable. And while not perfect by any means, the only check on these abuses lies in the right, nay the duty, of every physician to exercise his/her individual conscience in the performance of his/her professional art. If physicians knuckle under to this, we will be the next “Doctors of Infamy”.
I do applogize to Malcom Cross as I was wrong.
Those who are knowledgeable in these matters can you help me out with one aspect I don’t understand?
Medical staff can opt out of perfroming abortions if it violates their beliefs. How can a publically funded institution do the same thing?
How far do these limits go? Does the hospital pharmacy dispense contraceptives for example?
Pharmacists not wanting to dispense certain drugs have also been pressured by the state to do so.
The intervention by the state to overrule individual matters of concience is frightening and is spreading. First private property rights are trampled on, Ontario wants your organs after death without permission and now one’s beliefs are subject to sanction and subjugation to a marxist view.