Delta Hospice Society president Angelina Ireland is “shocked and outraged” that the B.C. government will pull all funding from the hospice by 2021 because it doesn’t offer assisted suicide.
Delta Hospice is a small 10-bed facility that provides palliative care for seriously ill patients and support groups for families. Earlier this year, the Fraser Health Authority and provincial Health Minister Adrian Dix said the hospice would face unspecified consequences if it did not start allowing legal assisted suicides to happen on site by Feb. 3.
Ireland responded that the hospice would rather give up $750,000 of its government funding (and put the hospice below the 50 per cent funding threshold set by government) than end the lives of its patients. She offered to do so.