Juno News - October 23, 2023


Canada set to legalize MAID for drug addicts

Hosted by
Harrison Faulkner
Mentioned
Simon David Brock Angus Reid Adam Zivo Bill C-63 Ipsos
Documents reveal SNC-Lavalin probe blocked by Trudeau cabinet The government’s own polling says Canadians think Trudeau is failing

Episode Stats


Length

11 minutes

Words per minute

158.33

Word count

1,887

Sentence count

78

Harmful content

Hate speech

8

sentences flagged


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

In a few short months from now, Canada is set to permit Canadians whose sole medical condition is mental illness to apply to the government to take their own life at the hands of the state via lethal injection. The Canadian government calls this MAID, Medical Assistance in Dying, but in order for that to make sense, one must accept the premise that death is an appropriate medical procedure for severe cases of mental illness. If that isn t enough to convince you that the people in charge of our country have all but given up on the most vulnerable people in our society, our countrymen, our neighbors who are silently struggling and barely getting by, what I'm about to tell you next is even worse. When Canada expands euthanasia to the mentally ill in March of 2024, it looks increasingly likely that the Canadian government is also going to expand assisted dying to people who are addicted to drugs.

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
Hosts, guests, and mentioned names generated with spaCy (en_core_web_sm), reconciled against Wikidata.
00:00:00.000 In just a few short months from now, Canada is set to permit Canadians whose 0.74
00:00:11.120 sole medical condition is mental illness to apply to the government to take their
00:00:15.060 own life at the hands of the state via a lethal injection. As you all know, the
00:00:19.860 Canadian government calls this MAID, medical assistance in dying. But in order
00:00:25.080 for that to make sense, one must accept the premise that death is an appropriate
00:00:29.680 medical procedure for severe cases of mental illness. If that isn't enough to
00:00:34.020 convince you that the people in charge of our country have all but given up on
00:00:37.080 the most vulnerable people in our society, our countrymen, our neighbors who are
00:00:41.540 silently struggling and barely getting by, what I'm about to tell you next is even
00:00:46.080 worse. When Canada expands euthanasia to the mentally ill in March of 2024, it looks
00:00:51.160 increasingly likely that the Canadian government is also going to expand
00:00:54.760 euthanasia to people who are addicted to drugs. This was being discussed last week
00:00:59.020 at a conference in British Columbia hosted by the Canadian Society of Addiction
00:01:03.220 Medicine. It's painfully ironic that the only newsworthy thing to come out of this
00:01:07.360 Canadian Society of Addiction Medicine conference were public calls to allow
00:01:11.900 drug-addicted Canadians to kill themselves at the hands of the state. As many have
00:01:15.940 pointed out, this is all beginning to look a lot like eugenics. The state being able to 0.87
00:01:20.020 pick and choose which Canadian lives are of value and which Canadian lives are worth 1.00
00:01:24.180 saving and which Canadian lives are permitted to end if that person chooses
00:01:28.380 that path. The government is doing everything it can to get people addicted to
00:01:33.780 drugs and to keep them addicted to drugs and also now they're offering to take
00:01:37.920 their lives once they get addicted to drugs. Drop a like in the video, help us up with
00:01:41.760 subscribing to the True North YouTube channel and the common question for the
00:01:44.700 episode is this. Should Canada allow for people who are addicted to drugs to apply
00:01:50.100 for euthanasia? Let me know in the comments and let's get into it. Canada will
00:01:53.940 legalize medically assisted dying for people addicted to drugs. That is the
00:01:59.100 dystopian headline coming from Vice News of all places which has gone viral
00:02:03.600 around the world. That's because for quite some time now the world has been
00:02:07.380 looking at Canada and the MAID regime under this Liberal government with
00:02:11.820 absolute disgust and shock at what they're seeing. When euthanasia became legal in
00:02:16.200 Canada in 2016, just over 1,000 Canadians applied for the quote-unquote
00:02:21.000 procedure, applied for death. By 2021, the last year that we have for available
00:02:26.700 data when it comes to MAID, more than 10,000 Canadians took their own lives at the
00:02:31.620 hands of the state via a lethal injection. For context, in 2021, MAID was the
00:02:36.360 seventh leading cause of death in Canada. More Canadians died from MAID in 2021 than
00:02:41.600 they did from liver disease, diabetes, pneumonia, Alzheimer's, and influenza. Now
00:02:47.780 in news that will surprise nobody, it turns out that the loudest advocates to
00:02:52.100 expand MAID to include the people who are addicted to drugs are also the same
00:02:56.240 people who proudly promote the policies of so-called harm reduction and safer
00:03:01.760 supply. Harm reduction policies to solve the opioid and toxic drug crisis are
00:03:07.400 policies that include supervised safe injection sites and clean needle exchange
00:03:13.160 programs. Supervised injection sites are exactly what the name says they are, a
00:03:17.720 place where addicts can take their illegal drugs in front of taxpayer-funded
00:03:21.860 officials who will revive the addicts if they are overdosing. Safe supply, on the
00:03:26.480 other hand, is where addicts can get hydromorphone, a more potent heroin
00:03:30.680 alternative which acts as a safer opiate alternative which won't kill the user. Thanks to
00:03:36.500 reporting from journalists like Adam Zevo, we know that the safe supply
00:03:40.500 hydromorphone program from the government is actually fueling a black 1.00
00:03:44.660 market fentanyl trade. Addicts are not taking the hydromorphone but instead
00:03:49.000 getting it for free and flipping it on the street to younger people. Getting those
00:03:53.900 younger Canadians addicted to drugs and into the dangerous death cycle of 1.00
00:03:58.340 addiction. Spearheaded by the federal government, so-called harm reduction and
00:04:02.660 safe supply programs usually go hand in hand with drug decriminalization, as we
00:04:07.580 have seen in British Columbia. In May of 2022, the federal government allowed
00:04:11.840 British Columbia to decriminalize the possession of hard drugs. This was in
00:04:16.160 response to the absolutely devastating opioid and toxic drug crisis taking
00:04:20.540 thousands of British Columbian lives a year. In fact, in 2016, British Columbia
00:04:25.060 declared a state of emergency. How has drug decriminalization, harm reduction, and safe
00:04:29.660 supply been working in British Columbia? Well, let's just say not very good.
00:04:34.280 British Columbia right now is on track to set the highest number of toxic drug
00:04:39.440 deaths in the province's history. In the first seven months of 2023, over 1,400
00:04:44.840 British Columbians have died due to toxic drug overdoses. And since a state of
00:04:49.160 emergency was declared in 2016, over 12,000 British Columbians have died due to
00:04:54.560 overdose. According to the CBC, unregulated drug toxicity is the leading
00:04:59.480 cause of death in British Columbia for persons aged 10 to 59, accounting for more
00:05:04.520 deaths than homicides, suicides, accidents, and natural diseases combined. The other
00:05:10.400 hotbed for overdose deaths in Canada, Toronto, wants to take British Columbia's
00:05:15.080 drug policies one step further. Toronto has asked the federal government to grant the
00:05:20.540 city an exemption to decriminalize the possession of all hard drugs of any amount
00:05:25.640 for almost any age. And to show you where the federal, provincial, and municipal
00:05:30.680 governments are at when it comes to solving this problem versus just
00:05:33.860 perpetuating the issues and making everyone else addicted to drugs, this
00:05:37.700 should show you what you need to know. In 2017 and 2019, Toronto put forward their
00:05:43.760 overdose strategy plan. This, of course, involves reliance on safe supply and harm
00:05:49.940 reduction policies, which, as we've seen in British Columbia, have done absolutely
00:05:53.540 nothing to stop the insane spike in deaths we're seeing. Meanwhile, when it
00:05:57.760 comes to having a mental health and addictions policy in Toronto, you know, a
00:06:01.820 policy to actually solve the problem, well, there isn't one. In April of 2023, the
00:06:06.900 Toronto Board of Health finally got around to asking the chief public health
00:06:10.340 officer of the city to come up with a mental health and addictions policy. That
00:06:14.800 policy is still not available. Now, you might think that organizations in
00:06:18.980 Canada, whose sole job is to keep Canadians who are struggling with mental
00:06:22.400 illness alive and functioning, would be telling the federal government to stop
00:06:26.540 this encroachment on MAID and euthanasia immediately. To say to the federal
00:06:31.540 government that expanding MAID to people whose sole condition is mental illness is a
00:06:35.840 destructive policy. But if you did think that, you'd be wrong. For example, when the
00:06:39.560 federal government introduced Bill C-7, a bill to pause the expansion of MAID to
00:06:44.220 include the mentally ill in Canada for one year, the Canadian Psychiatric
00:06:49.140 Association told the federal government that their decision to pause MAID to
00:06:54.000 include the mentally ill was unconstitutional and discriminatory. You 0.89
00:06:58.520 might think they would be telling the government that actually expanding MAID to
00:07:01.500 include the mentally ill is unconstitutional and discriminatory, but no, it was
00:07:05.780 their decision to stop it from happening right away that the Canadian
00:07:09.300 Psychiatric Association really took issue with. If you thought that was
00:07:12.480 concerning, you should also know that on February 15th, the parliamentary body in
00:07:17.160 charge of debating and discussing the expansion of MAID recommended to the
00:07:21.480 federal government that MAID be expanded to include, quote, mature minors whose
00:07:27.640 death is, quote, reasonably foreseeable. Mature minors to be able to apply for 0.97
00:07:33.300 euthanasia. Oh, and at one of these parliamentary committee meetings, a doctor from the
00:07:37.680 Quebec College of Physicians also recommended that infants and babies who
00:07:43.120 with severe deformations and limited chance of survival should also be eligible for
00:07:49.060 MAID for euthanasia. These minors could with their tutors or parental parent could
00:07:59.740 make a request for MAID based on the level of persistent and intolerable suffering that
00:08:05.560 they may experience and become unmanageable and senseless. The same for babies from zero 0.83
00:08:13.120 to one years of age who are born with severe deformations, very grave and severe syndromes,
00:08:22.500 medical syndromes whose life expectancy and level of suffering are such that it would make sense
00:08:31.780 to ensure that they do not suffer. In fact, we're now so beyond the realm of normal that we have
00:08:37.460 clothing retailers like Simon's putting together ads that promote euthanasia. Last breaths are sacred.
00:08:47.060 When I imagine my final days, I see music, I see the ocean, I see cheesecake. Even now, as I seek help to end my life,
00:09:14.820 with all the pain, and in these final moments, there is still so much beauty.
00:09:24.980 You just have to be brave enough to see it.
00:09:32.560 Somehow, I guess this is also supposed to encourage people to shop at Simon's. I want to show you all
00:09:38.020 some conflicting public opinion data on this issue, on the issue of expanding MAID to people whose sole condition is mental illness.
00:09:46.680 The activist group Dying With Dignity, whose purpose is to rapidly expand euthanasia to include as many people
00:09:52.960 it appears as possible, put together a poll with Ipsos, a polling firm, and let me just say that the public opinion data
00:09:59.540 they have is downright disturbing. Apparently, 80% of Canadians support access to MAID for those suffering
00:10:06.580 solely from a severe mental illness, which is relatively unchanged from last year. 71% of Canadians
00:10:13.300 support the ability for mature minors to request and be considered eligible for MAID, providing they meet
00:10:20.200 all criteria under the law. And 8 in 10, or 78% of Canadians, support the removal of the reasonably
00:10:27.560 foreseeable eligibility requirement from the MAID law. Meanwhile, an Angus Reid poll shows that 51%
00:10:34.040 of Canadians oppose expanding MAID to people whose sole condition is mental illness. As David Brooks in
00:10:40.280 The Atlantic put it, we're now seeing what liberalism to its absolute extreme looks like. As he writes in his
00:10:46.040 piece in The Atlantic, once the equal and infinite dignity of all human life is compromised,
00:10:51.080 everything is up for grabs. Suddenly, debates arise over which lives are worth living. Suddenly,
00:10:56.920 you have a couple of doctors at the Quebec College of Physicians pushing the envelope even further,
00:11:01.800 suggesting that babies with severe deformations and limited chances of survival be eligible for
00:11:06.200 medically assisted death. Suddenly, people who are ill or infirm are implicitly encouraged to feel
00:11:11.720 guilty for wanting to live. Human dignity, once inherent in life itself, is measured by what a
00:11:17.640 person can contribute, what level of happiness she is deemed capable of enjoying, how much she costs.
00:11:24.200 It feels as though instead of bringing Canadians back from the ledge, instead of offering to help
00:11:28.680 them recover, instead of telling them that their life matters and there's a value to their life in
00:11:33.160 this country, the government is simply nudging them off. What have we come to? All right,
00:11:39.160 everyone, that's going to do it for us today on the show. Thank you so much for tuning in.
00:11:42.200 My name is Harrison Faulkner and this is Ratioed.