OTTAWA -- Armed with a government commitment of $50 million to implement a National Dementia Strategy, advocates are not about to let up on efforts to keep the issue on the front burner.

With no law in place to govern assisted suicide, physicians and vulnerable patients face uncertainty, confusion and more opinions than facts.

Justin Trudeau������Ƶapp Liberals captivated Canadians during last year������Ƶapp election campaign with its vision to create a new Canada — a humanitarian Canada focused on making the world a more optimistic and equal place. But in its good-natured desire for rapid change, the government������Ƶapp efforts to protect the dignity of the human person have been misguided. 

TORONTO - Doctors are extending efforts to regain full medical coverage for all refugees even as the federal government backed down on health insurance cuts to one class of refugees.

"Basically it leaves people sicker and dead," Dr. Katherine Rouleau, a family physician at Toronto's St. Michael's Hospital, told The Catholic Register just three days after cuts to the interim federal health program ceased coverage for medications, many diagnostic tests, prosthetics, vision care and dental care for most refugees. "That is not an option, so the fight will go on pretty fiercely."

Rouleau is one of hundreds of doctors who have protested the cuts under the banner of Canadian Doctors for Refugee Care.

Agnes Raduly discovered she was diabetic after she arrived in Canada five months ago. She������Ƶapp one of thousands of Roma from Hungary and the Czech Republic in Canada claiming refugee status, living on less than $1,000 a month, struggling with a new language and a vastly foreign culture.

In mid-May she got a letter from Citizenship and Immigration Canada telling her that her medication for diabetes won’t be covered by the federal government������Ƶapp health plan starting July 1. The two pills in the morning and two in the evening are more than she can possibly afford, she said.

TORONTO - When Shirley Christo, a parish nurse at St. John Fisher parish in Brampton, Ont., returned home from the International Parish Nursing Assembly conference a few years ago, she was greeted by some shocking news: a woman in her parish, who had been diagnosed with cancer and whose husband potentially had a brain tumour, had also just been diagnosed with Alzheimer������Ƶapp.

Christo had been to this woman������Ƶapp home several times; she knew her well. But this time was different. She took with her a prayer blanket she’d received at the conference and knocked on the woman������Ƶapp door. When the woman answered, Christo asked, “May I go on this journey with you?”

The woman said yes. Christo wrapped her prayer blanket around her, and has been by her side ever since.