In this episode of The Gunn Show, Sheila and Kian give you an update on the progress of their MAID documentary, "Made: The Dark Side of Canadian Compassion." They talk about the progress so far and give you a sneak peek of some of the stories they have gathered so far.
00:01:52.200But the stories are tough to listen to.
00:01:55.580I didn't realize it would be that hard to hear from some of these families.
00:02:00.600And I don't know why I thought that because we are stepping into them to hear the story of the day a nuclear bomb went off in the middle of their lives.
00:02:09.300It takes a lot to have to remove yourself from the interview and just listen and not have the sniffles in the background while I'm pressing record.
00:02:19.760One of the reasons we're in Ottawa right now is because we attended a summit on MAID, what I think is probably Canada's largest summit on medical assistance and dying.
00:02:31.280And it was about the Christian response to MAID.
00:02:35.100And so we're trying to go and get stories from all aspects of this issue.
00:02:40.420Families who are supportive of MAID but disagree with how it happened to them, people who have experienced MAID in their family under the previous protocols, people who have been offered MAID but were basically perfectly healthy.
00:02:58.040Tell us, you know, give us a little bit of a sneak preview of some of the things we're going to include in the documentary.
00:03:04.460I think the not so funny part about that is we had a plan to talk to people.
00:03:12.140And while we were in places like BC, you would just get an email saying, hey, this is happening because we had that email that went out asking people stories.
00:03:20.480So we'd already be somewhere and then we'd get an email saying this happened three, six months ago.
00:03:25.580And we're like, OK, now we have another interview.
00:03:28.160And I think some of our most important interviews came that way.
00:03:36.040And I think in regards to a sneak peek, it really is just like that sporadic moment of holy ass, like holy crap, this is the craziest thing that I've ever heard with MAID beyond the veteran stories.
00:03:49.800And I can't even give a sneak peek on the one I want to give a sneak peek on because we have some big news coming with that.
00:03:59.700But I think it's just it has been hard, but it also has been it's been a very great feeling knowing that we're doing such important work on such an important story.
00:04:10.680Yeah, I mean, one of the big stories that we can't really talk about, but I'm glad to say that we were involved and were able to do just a little bit more than tell the story came to us when we were sitting at the airport waiting for our respective flights to come home.
00:04:28.940You were headed back to Calgary and me to Edmonton, and then you were on the phone as we were waiting for our flights to come in.
00:04:35.020And one of the things I've noticed, and I've said this to people who ask us sort of why we're making the documentary, is that our emails are divided when they come to us.
00:04:48.660It is people who, as you say, are saying, I've got a crazy story to tell.
00:04:53.620You're never going to believe what's happening to my family or my grandma or whomever.
00:04:59.520And the other half of the emails I'm getting are people saying, Sheila and Kian, it's nowhere near as bad as what you're presenting it to be.
00:05:09.040They are not actively trying to kill people who are not within hours of their imminent death.
00:05:15.220They're not already trying to kill the mentally ill.
00:05:20.940And for me, those two sides are exactly why we have to do the documentary, because there are so many important stories to be told, because those stories are going to be what informs that other group of people who think that we are just completely off our rockers.
00:05:37.880I would say that I would, before we did the start of this documentary, I sat with the people who would email us and say, it can't be that crazy.
00:06:08.120But now I feel like it's mine, because I now stand with the other side.
00:06:11.900And I think a little bit more extreme that this should not be a thing at all.
00:06:17.780I know people who have gotten made, and inside it kind of made sense why they got it.
00:06:24.840And just after hearing more, with my job, I'm 20% removed from a lot of the stories that I don't particularly have my foot in, because I'm working on bigger, not bigger stories, but other big stories that I can't really diverge my attention over.
00:06:45.020But now that I have, it's been insane.
00:06:47.300So yeah, I stand with the other side now.
00:06:50.020Yeah, I think it's a testament, though, to you as a filmmaker.
00:06:52.980And I think as, I don't want to even say that you're a conservative, but I think the political spectrum is close-minded and not willing to hear the other side.
00:07:02.560And people who are willing to listen and are open to their viewpoints changing.
00:07:06.900And I think that's how you approach this.
00:07:10.740Your mind wasn't turned off to hearing the arguments from people who say, we opened a door here the day we made this legal for people whose deaths were imminent, and something else marched through, and now we don't know how to close that door.
00:07:26.760Yeah, and I guess looking at a lot of the opposition to made, 90% of it I want to say, and from what I saw, was just from the more religious folk.
00:07:39.340And as many people who watch this show know, I'm not religious at all, and I have trouble standing with them on a lot of the stuff that they...
00:07:48.280Right. You look at it through a secular worldview, you knew that the pastors who were being arrested, being arrested for going to church was wrong.
00:07:56.760Yeah. But you didn't have to believe in what they believed to feel that way, and I think you're approaching this kind of the same way.
00:08:04.500Yeah, so it's been great to put 100% of my attention in on being able to look at it, set aside from the religious perspective,
00:08:14.220and then also set aside from the perspective of when I came into it, where I kind of agreed with the first stage of made, but now I don't.
00:08:20.960So I think it's going to be great for the documentary, too, because I'm going to be able to make it from that perspective of kind of an evolution of made,
00:08:31.000of when the majority of Canadians said, okay, this kind of makes sense.
00:08:44.720And here are the people that you should not be trusting your way out with.
00:08:49.740Right. Yeah. And, you know, we're stepping, as I said, into families who are explaining the worst tragedy that has ever happened to them.
00:08:58.160And for them, we've heard, you know, where's the compassion for us?
00:09:05.320There is no end to our suffering, because this was not just done to our loved one, but it was also done to us.
00:09:13.080And there's very little support for those people.
00:09:16.400We have these well-funded activists, like Dying With Dignity, pushing and advancing this agenda for anybody who feels an inconvenience in their lives at this point.
00:09:27.580And it's families that are just ruined in the wake of it.
00:09:32.600Yeah, I think the most powerful thing I've heard in a month now of interviewing people is someone said that when you decide that my life is not worth living anymore, your compassion is a threat to my life.
00:11:39.420If you are on the other political side.
00:11:42.000I would have loved to speak to someone with Church Under Fire who has said, you know, that COVID is whatever and these people shouldn't have opened up their churches.
00:12:20.720And frankly, these people don't need to speak to us.
00:12:23.540They are the ones constantly courted in the media.
00:12:26.380They are the ones constantly courted by the government and funded by the government to advance this agenda.
00:12:31.060They have everybody in the whole wide world to speak to.
00:12:33.140They have the entire mainstream media.
00:12:35.760Their ideas are already being pushed in the House of Commons.
00:12:39.400I think it's our job, as we say at Rebel News, to tell the other side of the story.
00:12:43.400And I think that's exactly what we're doing here.
00:12:46.020We're telling the stories of the people who are being shut out.
00:12:50.180And, you know, considering things that I hadn't considered, and I think about issues of life, because I look at this through a religious worldview, but I also look at it through a scientific worldview.
00:13:03.940So I'm one of those people who thinks, you know, we're created in the image of God, and that makes us worthy of life.
00:13:12.100And I don't think suffering is a fatal illness.
00:13:16.540I think suffering is part of the human condition, as Jordan Peterson would say.
00:13:20.800But we're hearing things that I had never considered.
00:13:24.700And I would like to think that I'm somewhat attuned to what's going on with MAID, like the actual process of what happens, like the actual medicines that a doctor or a nurse practitioner, in the case of Canada, will come and administer you a series of cocktails.
00:13:44.200I'd also never even thought of how it happens.
00:13:50.120Like we heard that in Ontario, it's like literally less than a handful of people who are administering this to themselves, which is an option.
00:14:00.180It's almost exclusively medical killing.
00:15:09.860A lot of people don't really think about what goes on inside their head when they're actually vulnerable with themselves, when they struggle with suicidality.
00:15:16.540They can ask themselves questions that other people could never have asked, like, who's going to find my body?
00:16:07.600And then the next drug is going to be a paralytic so that you just stop breathing.
00:16:13.180You suffocate because your muscles don't contract anymore.
00:16:16.720And it's all those objections that would make someone say, look, I want to go, but I can't do this, which I think is an objection that saves a lot of lives.
00:16:30.460And that's very frightening, especially when you see just how MAID has skyrocketed, like growing exponentially, 30% year over year consistently, so that it's becoming one of the leading causes of death in this country.
00:16:46.100And I think higher than we could imagine, because in B.C. and Ontario, they have recommended that doctors don't put MAID on the death certificate, just the cause of MAID or the reason they access MAID.
00:16:57.140So I'm worried that once we open it up to the mentally ill, I just, I can't even imagine the absolute trauma.
00:17:11.700I mean, I think it's going to grow because of the things we heard.
00:17:15.800We heard families left behind saying, I became suicidal because of the damage.
00:17:20.920We've got an easy way for you to join your loved one.
00:17:22.860I'm just, I'm worried that it is just going to be a mushroom cloud of death in this country.
00:17:28.380Well, we've heard someone talk about how they, unbeknownst to them, drove their daughter to a MAID appointment when they thought it was a regular doctor's appointment.
00:17:52.900And that's scary because that's going to happen a lot more than someone who's struggling with something that now could be approved as MAID, which shouldn't be.
00:18:01.660But then it just opens up that to every young person that goes through something slightly traumatic that just kind of throws them over the edge when they're struggling with something.
00:19:05.500I mean, we've already got some precedent for this.
00:19:07.380The things we're hearing are difficult and important because one of the things that proponents of medical assistance in dying, and it's not that, it's medical killing, let's call it what it is, is that they've made it so sterile.
00:19:32.780It's clinical, it's compassionate, it's not dirty, it's, you know, just, you'll drift off into a tomorrow land.
00:19:43.540And I think what we're learning along the way is it is completely the opposite of that.
00:19:48.340It is, it's a, really, it's a, it's a bloodbath without the blood.
00:19:52.260And that's what I learned is actually, which I had no idea and didn't even think about it that way, is that that's only Canada.
00:19:58.320Is that when you bring up the other countries that are kind of more advanced, I hate to say, they don't have it included in part of their medical system.
00:20:47.800You know, one of the things I learned from that MAID Summit was that the funding for medical assistance in dying actually comes out of palliative care.
00:21:00.320So when the federal government or the provincial government is announcing funding for palliative care, it's not really for palliative care because a portion of that is going directly to killing people.
00:21:12.000So when we hear the government saying that they're giving supports to end of life, that's not it at all.
00:21:18.580It's actually drawing funds away from proper end of life care and throwing it into the death care category.
00:21:34.340I don't even know if we would be sitting here right now or traveling around and doing this documentary if they were just completely open with everything.
00:21:42.000I think that we would still be doing our activism, still be doing journalism on it, but I don't think that we would be blowing it as wide open as we would be right now if they weren't so sneaky.
00:22:19.760And I mean, and punishing the objectors.
00:22:22.020So we talked to a story that, a person in a story that Drea Humphrey has covered extensively, and that is the Delta Hospice Society.
00:22:32.980The Delta Hospice Society ran an $8 million privately funded, or at least they had crowdfunded the money to build the facility.
00:22:42.460A palliative care center, a palliative care center, and a supportive care center, so cancer patients who had recovered or learning to live with their diagnosis, they could go there too.
00:22:53.340And they operated in partnership with the provincial government.
00:22:57.420But when they refused to allow the maid providers into the facility, then the BC government just expropriated their facility, took an $8 million facility, didn't compensate the Delta Hospice Society, slapped a new name on it, and made it a place where they can kill their patients now.
00:23:24.680And now, at least the Delta Hospice Society, they recognize that you might be sending your grandma off to the doctor's office, but the doctor might be whispering in her ear a little bit about how you can just make it easier on your grandkids at the end of your life.
00:23:38.520They send people to accompany people to their medical appointments to make sure they aren't coerced into medical killing.
00:23:53.580And I think, you know, for people who are worried about how their loved ones are being treated in the system, I think it's a great idea.
00:24:03.460But one of the things we're also learning is there's not a lot of support, particularly in the West, for families who are trying to either save their loved one or who have experienced medical assistance and dying in their family.
00:24:19.720There's almost nothing out there for them.
00:24:35.380There are a few organizations that are working hard, but they're like this big versus these other organizations that are actively pushing this culture of death.
00:24:46.440And until there's some sort of balance between this and this, I don't know what's going to change.
00:24:55.520I don't think you can't have a balance anymore.