Juno News - October 23, 2023


Canada set to legalize MAID for drug addicts


Episode Stats

Length

11 minutes

Words per Minute

158.33194

Word Count

1,887

Sentence Count

75

Hate Speech Sentences

8


Summary


Transcript

00:00:00.000 In just a few short months from now, Canada is set to permit Canadians whose
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
00:01:20.020 pick and choose which Canadian lives are of value and which Canadian lives are worth
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
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
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
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
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
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.