Carstairs proud of advocacy for dying

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This article was published 24/08/2017 (3203 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

OTTAWA — Retired Manitoba senator Sharon Carstairs will join the Order of Canada on Friday, without skipping a beat in her decades-long advocacy for palliative care.

“There is a better way, and we have the ability to provide that better way,” Carstairs, 75, said Wednesday.

Though born to a Nova Scotia family, Carstairs became a prominent Manitoban and the first woman to lead an official Opposition in a Canadian legislature, under the provincial Liberals.

But she takes the most pride in helping more Canadians die in comfort.

Carstairs recalls her mother having a drawn-out, difficult death in 1980 because the health system was fixated on curing people and sending them home.

That’s when she focused her energy on palliative care, which provides relief to people who are slowly dying, through drugs that treat pain and counselling that alleviates mental stress.

As a senator, former prime minister Jean Chrétien made Carstairs the minister with special responsibility for palliative care, an exceptional role for someone in the upper chamber. She travelled to other countries to compare treatments and authored four reports.

In 1995, just five per cent of Canadians had access to palliative care, compared with roughly 35 per cent today, she said.

While that’s a strong improvement, she’s observed countries such as Portugal go from having virtually no palliative care to offering better care than Canada, in the same period.

“I don’t want Canadians to die without the appropriate care, and unfortunately, far too many of them are,” she said. “Palliative care isn’t about death; it’s about living well until the very end.”

In 2001, she helped start the Canadian Virtual Hospice, a Winnipeg-based website where a clinical team answers questions and provides nearby resources to people dying and their families. She says the site attracts 1.6 million visits a year.

After 18 years in the Senate, Carstairs retired in 2012, but has kept busy. She’s on multiple boards that deal with palliative care, and she helped fund the Prairieaction Foundation, which is focused on eliminating family violence through research, including work at the University of Manitoba.

Carstairs said she’s encouraged by recent legislation that would create a national framework for palliative care, through a bill that’s garnered cross-party support. She said the recent assisted-dying bill shows the need for society to find options for an aging population.

But she’s distressed at Manitoba’s lack of progress and looming cuts to health care. Though Manitoba was the first province to roll out palliative care beds, she’s still pushing for Winnipeg’s Health Sciences Centre to offer them to patients.

In an era of reconciliation, she is adamant about improving access to care on reserves and remote towns.

“We have yet to declare palliative care a core service for people living in Indigenous communities, and quite frankly that is a national disgrace,” she said. “It’s that kind of thing that says I can’t stop; I have to keep going; I have to keep moving the agenda further.”

As the first woman to lead any major political party in Manitoba, Carstairs was head of the Manitoba Liberals from 1984 to 1993, an MLA for River Heights from 1986 to 1994, and opposition leader from 1988 to 1990.

Carstairs’ appointment was announced on the eve of Canada Day 2016, and she’s been wearing the hexagonal Order of Canada lapel pin since then. On Friday, Gov. Gen. David Johnston will formally invest her into the order through a ceremony at Rideau Hall.

dylan.robertson@freepress.mb.ca