This summer, Canada’s well-known doctor shortage almost got worse. A portion of doctors in Canada’s largest province started scouting for jobs elsewhere, expecting that Ontario would soon require them to violate their conscience. The College of Physicians and Surgeons of Ontario, the licensing body for Ontario doctors, had drafted a policy that required doctors to refer for procedures with which they disagreed on moral or religious grounds.The public reaction was loud and furious. Religious groups and opinion writers were quick to point out the authoritarian nature of such a policy. But the decisive blow came from within the profession itself: the Ontario Medical Association, the professional organization of Ontario’s doctors, released a scathing condemnation of the policy and openly urged the College to abandon it. The OMA said: “We believe that it should never be professional misconduct for an Ontarian physician to act in accordance with his or her religious or moral beliefs.”
In the end, the College gave in and enacted a vague and watered-down version of the original draft. The storm passed over. But in the ensuing calm, Ontario doctors still have grave reason for concern. The public debate revealed that the College of Physicians had produced the policy in response to suggestions by the Ontario Human Rights Commission. This notorious organ had indeed provided the College with two detailed submissions which asked the College to adopt the OHRC’s troubled understanding of doctors’ rights and duties.
The OHRC clearly expects doctors to inform patients about all legal treatments, and to refer for these treatments regardless of their moral or religious objections. In their view, a doctor’s “denial of services or refusal to provide a woman with information relating to contraception or abortion… would be discriminatory”. In fact, the OHRC has entirely reconstructed the doctor’s role. It says: “It is the Commission’s position that doctors, as providers of services that are not religious in nature, must essentially ‘check their personal views at the door’ in providing medical care.” So much for conscientious objection.
Any citizen can bring a human rights complaint against any doctor in Ontario, at public expense – and the doctor, who must pay out of pocket for his own defense, can brace for judgment by the OHRC’s new standard. Ontario doctors are not out of the woods. And the fire is spreading. The doctors’ college of Manitoba has indicated plans to model its own policy after the Ontario College’s first draft, and the doctors’ college of Alberta is circulating a new draft policy that may indicate a duty to refer.
Things aren’t heating up only in Canada...
The rest of this Mercator article, written ably by Lea Singh, is here.
