Juno News - May 18, 2023


Is Canada trying to ELIMINATE the Homeless？


Episode Stats

Length

17 minutes

Words per Minute

177.41542

Word Count

3,148

Sentence Count

146

Misogynist Sentences

5

Hate Speech Sentences

4


Summary


Transcript

00:00:00.000 what does it say about our country our fellow countrymen and importantly our leaders when
00:00:11.920 almost one-third of canadians polled in a recent survey said they support extending medical
00:00:16.840 assistance in dying euthanasia to canadians whose sole condition in life is that they are homeless
00:00:22.840 or in poverty like so many polls published in the legacy media canadians would be wise to take the
00:00:28.200 results with a grain of salt after all i'm pretty sure none of you watching this episode were asked
00:00:33.120 to participate in this specific poll but is canada really a country that believes being homeless is
00:00:37.900 the same as receiving a death sentence that there's no hope for a canadian who becomes homeless or is
00:00:42.720 experiencing poverty the truth is this is not just a shocking indictment on our society but an
00:00:47.180 indictment on our leadership now the problem for all of canada is that our leaders who deeply believe
00:00:52.060 in expanding euthanasia to the mentally ill won't see this as an indictment but rather an endorsement
00:00:57.100 of their liberal plans but if made won't kill enough people canadians can simply go down to
00:01:01.760 their local safe supply depot receive a government approved heroin substitute trade that in for a
00:01:07.380 toxic dose of fentanyl on the street like so many canadians and then die of a toxic fentanyl overdose
00:01:13.420 all of this begs the serious and honest question without hyperbole is the federal government trying
00:01:18.480 to eliminate the poor it's truly horrific that that is where we are at as a country right now but when
00:01:23.180 you go through the data that we're going to go through on this show that question becomes deadly
00:01:27.140 serious drop a like in the video help us out by subscribing to the true north youtube channel
00:01:30.840 and the common question for the episode is this it's the same one in the poll you weren't asked
00:01:35.360 to participate in do you believe that it is right to extend made to people who are homeless let me know
00:01:41.340 in the comments and let's get into it take a look at this data from a recent opinion poll published by
00:01:45.620 a company called research co earlier this month 27 percent of canadians agree that made should be
00:01:51.160 extended to people whose sole condition is poverty 28 percent of canadians agree that made should be
00:01:56.400 extended to people whose sole condition is homelessness 51 percent of canadians agree that
00:02:01.700 made should be extended to people because of an inability to receive medical treatment 43 percent of
00:02:07.560 canadians agree that made should be extended to the mentally ill and 50 percent of canadians agree
00:02:11.880 that may should be extended to people with a disability euthanasia in canada has been rapidly expanding
00:02:17.960 since Justin Trudeau became Prime Minister. In 2016, the federal government passed Bill C-14,
00:02:24.360 the initial euthanasia law amending the criminal code to allow for medical assistance in death.
00:02:30.340 Bill C-14, the original medical assistance in dying bill, allowed for anyone diagnosed with
00:02:35.600 a terminal illness to be approved for medical-assisted euthanasia. In March of 2021,
00:02:41.100 medical assistance in dying was further expanded in Canada with the passage of Bill C-7. Bill C-7
00:02:47.020 allows anyone with a disability or chronic illness to receive medical assistance in dying.
00:02:53.420 This rapid expansion of MAID in Canada has resulted in UN watchdogs condemning Bill C-7,
00:02:59.340 including disability rights groups. But that simply was not enough to stop Justin Trudeau and
00:03:03.800 the federal government from expanding MAID for people with disabilities and chronic illnesses.
00:03:09.140 So what's the result of all this? Well, over 30,000 Canadians have died at the hands of the state
00:03:13.880 since euthanasia became legal in 2016. Some basic facts about euthanasia in Canada are important
00:03:20.140 before we go on. The data for 2022 hasn't been released yet, but in 2021, 3.3% of all deaths in
00:03:27.220 Canada were the result of MAID. And 81% of written requests to receive MAID are approved. And up until
00:03:35.000 just a few months ago, Justin Trudeau and the federal government were prepared to extend medical assistance
00:03:39.340 and dying to Canadians whose sole condition was that they were mentally ill, was that they were
00:03:43.720 depressed. The government eventually introduced legislation to pause this expansion because I
00:03:48.200 guess expanding euthanasia to the mentally ill was just even a step too far for Justin Trudeau.
00:03:53.120 So that expansion of MAID to the mentally ill has been halted for at least 12 months, but it doesn't
00:03:57.400 really tell the entire story of what's been going on in Canada. Take this article written in The
00:04:02.120 Spectator in the UK from last year. The title of the article is Why is Canada Euthanizing the Poor?
00:04:08.980 A woman in Ontario was forced into euthanasia because her housing benefits did not allow her
00:04:14.080 to get better housing, which didn't aggravate her crippling allergies. Another disabled woman
00:04:19.200 applied to die because she simply cannot afford to keep on living. Another sought euthanasia because
00:04:24.160 COVID-related debt left her unable to pay for the treatment, which kept her chronic pain bearable.
00:04:29.140 When the federal government was debating expanding MAID in 2021 to include not just terminal illness
00:04:34.820 but chronic illness and disabilities, they had the parliamentary budget officer tally up just how
00:04:40.000 much money the government would save if they expanded MAID in this way. Cost estimate for Bill
00:04:45.400 C-7. Oh no, you're not living in a dystopian nightmare. The federal government is just making
00:04:50.440 sure they know how much money they're going to save if they can kill off people with disabilities.
00:04:54.800 And the answer, if you really wanted to know, $149 million. Shocking and gross right out of a
00:05:01.580 dystopian novel, but frankly, pretty much par for the course these days with our country, isn't it?
00:05:06.440 Last year, City News interviewed a man named Amir Farsud who had applied for MAID because
00:05:10.980 his landlord was selling his rental apartment and Amir could no longer afford to live and get by
00:05:17.260 on Ontario disability benefits. Amir Farsud has applied for medically assisted dying known as MAID.
00:05:24.780 He lives in constant agony due to a back injury, but has started the process for end of life
00:05:29.640 because his rooming house is up for sale and he can't find anywhere else to live that he can afford.
00:05:35.220 He barely survives on Ontario disability support payments, which are just over $1,200 a month.
00:05:41.220 He doesn't want to die, but being homeless is not an option. Farsud meets the criteria for MAID,
00:05:48.120 physical suffering due to disability that cannot be relieved. His doctor, who knows Farsud's real
00:05:54.400 reason for MAID is his fear of being homeless, signed off on the application in August.
00:05:59.440 And that interview on City News quickly went viral on social media, amassing hundreds of thousands of
00:06:04.120 views and resulting in an outpouring of support for Amir. And what do you know, a month later,
00:06:09.340 Amir Farsud no longer wanted to end his life because he received public support.
00:06:15.240 Farsud thought he would be dead by today, but as you're about to see, so much has changed.
00:06:21.560 You are a different person. I'm a different person. The first time we spoke, you know,
00:06:25.440 I'd wake up every morning and, and I had nothing but, but darkness and misery and stress and
00:06:31.540 hopelessness and, and all that. And now I've got all the opposites of those things.
00:06:37.380 If that is not the most obvious and clear argument against extending MAID to the homeless and the
00:06:41.920 poor and people who have chronic illnesses, then I don't know what is because Amir no longer wants
00:06:47.380 to die. Amir is with us today, but how many Canadians are no longer with us because they
00:06:51.980 were poor, homeless, they had no support around them, and no one showed them that they actually
00:06:56.620 cared. And because the government left the door open for them to die. As we've discussed previously
00:07:01.360 on this show, the record number of Canadians who have to rely on food banks just to survive
00:07:05.080 are now going to those same food banks and requesting medical assistance in dying because
00:07:10.220 struggling this way is simply no longer sustainable for them. That they would rather die than have
00:07:15.520 to line up at food banks every single day just to get by. And that's not hyperbole. Take
00:07:19.780 it from the CEO of the Mississauga Food Bank testifying to MPs. You talked about individuals
00:07:25.180 in mental health crisis even coming to the food bank and looking to access medical access
00:07:31.320 and dying. Conservatives have been accused of gaslighting or even making these stories
00:07:35.500 up. But you can confirm today that people are indeed coming to food banks to end their life.
00:07:41.780 people who are truly homebound and can't go to their food bank, many of them with disabilities
00:07:50.920 or are seniors. And so as we've built relationships with those folks, providing service to them
00:07:55.780 month over month, some of them in chatting with us when you call and say, how are you doing
00:07:59.680 to talk about their order, have said, I can't go on like this and express that they are looking
00:08:04.080 into those options. And so it has happened, you know, a number of times over the past year.
00:08:10.080 And so we've invested in more mental health supports for our staff for the impact it has
00:08:16.500 on them when they engage in those conversations. But no, it's not a made up story. That is something
00:08:21.480 we're encountering. Four veterans who served this country, put their life on the line for
00:08:25.440 this country and who now have PTSD were offered medical assistance in dying as a treatment option
00:08:31.260 for their PTSD by a veterans affairs case officer. She, he was asking for a completely separate
00:08:38.300 service and supports for neurological injuries. And she said, Oh, just by the way, if up the road,
00:08:46.060 you have suicidal thoughts. And this is what he told me. She said, it's better than blowing your
00:08:52.340 brains out against the wall. Also, Canada is now extending made to inmates in prisons. We no longer put
00:08:58.280 our inmates to death by hanging or lethal injection, but well, actually we do put them to death by
00:09:02.860 lethal injection. This time by MAID. This is from the Belleville Intelligencer. Canada is putting
00:09:07.880 prisoners to death again with MAID this time. Under the current Corrections Canada procedure,
00:09:12.820 any inmate can apply for MAID via a written request to prison health authorities. Within five days,
00:09:18.140 the prisoner is then granted an eligibility assessment with an in-house health professional,
00:09:22.440 such as the prison's resident doctor or nurse practitioner. If they pass the first assessment,
00:09:26.940 they are referred to an outside physician or nurse for a second opinion, after which MAID can be
00:09:31.660 approved. Canada's rate of in-custody MAID is well beyond that of any other jurisdiction in which
00:09:37.260 assisted suicide is legal. Everywhere else, the procedure is either not done or has yielded no more
00:09:42.800 than one instance that qualified under special circumstances. And in Canada, nine federal inmates
00:09:48.900 have been put to death by MAID. The government only halted medical assistance in dying to the mentally
00:09:54.320 ill because they wanted more time. Not because it was fundamentally the wrong thing to do, not because
00:10:00.100 it was completely immoral, but because they needed more time to get the facts right. But surely we
00:10:05.220 would never get to a position in Canada where we would have physicians calling for infants to receive
00:10:09.840 MAID, right? We would never get to a position where a college of physicians would be advocating for
00:10:14.700 infanticide. Well, as a matter of fact, that is exactly what happened last year. Dr. Louis Roy from the
00:10:20.040 Quebec College of Physicians told the House of Commons Special Joint Committee on Medical Assistance
00:10:24.520 in Dying on Friday that his organization believes MAID can be appropriate for infants up to age one
00:10:30.820 who are born with severe malformations and grave and severe syndromes, for which their perspective
00:10:36.960 of survival is null, so to speak. The same for babies from zero to one years of age who are born with
00:10:43.980 severe deformations, very grave and severe syndromes, medical syndromes, whose life expectancy and level
00:10:55.820 of suffering are such that it would make sense to ensure that they do not suffer. And when a conservative
00:11:03.900 MP, Rosemary Falk, tried to pass a motion condemning that recommendation by the Quebec College of Physicians,
00:11:10.140 one Liberal MP, Chad Collins, said he wasn't interested in wasting his time.
00:11:15.580 The Quebec College of Physicians recently recommended to the Special Joint Committee of
00:11:19.420 Medical Assistance in Dying that it would be appropriate to expand access to MAID to infants
00:11:25.260 up to the age of one who are born with severe or grave syndromes. So I'd like to take this opportunity
00:11:31.420 to move the following motion, that the committee report to the House that it is of the opinion that it
00:11:37.660 rejects the Quebec College of Physicians assertion on October 7th, 2022, that the expansion of medical
00:11:45.500 assistance in dying MAID is appropriate for infants up to the age of one who are born with severe and
00:11:53.260 grave syndromes. Mr. Collins? Yeah, opposed. Not interested in wasting time. So all of this now brings us to how the
00:12:02.940 federal government is approaching the opioid crisis in Canada. The opioid crisis since 2016 has taken
00:12:09.180 over 35,000 Canadian lives. And the federal government's approach to solving this problem
00:12:14.860 is to embrace a strategy ironically called safer supply. And just as the government views medical
00:12:20.940 assistance in dying as a health care solution to people suffering from chronic illnesses and
00:12:25.740 disabilities, the government believes that safe supply is a solution to opioid addiction. Not only that,
00:12:31.100 they believe that safe supply, as they always say, saves lives. A very extensive National Post
00:12:37.740 investigation by Adam Zeevo completely debunks the federal government's so-called safer supply
00:12:43.500 strategy to save lives. At these safe supply depots, Canadians who are struggling with opioid addictions
00:12:50.060 can receive what is called hydromorphone, which is a government-approved heroin substitute that apparently
00:12:56.220 is way more potent than heroin. As Adam Zeevo writes in the National Post,
00:13:00.860 according to a number of addiction physicians, a significant portion of the safer supply drugs
00:13:05.180 being freely distributed through government funded programs are not actually being consumed by their
00:13:09.660 intended recipients. Instead, these drugs are being sold on the black market at rock bottom prices,
00:13:15.820 typically to fund the ongoing purchase of illicit fentanyl. Safer supply programs do not curb the
00:13:21.500 fentanyl market. They subsidize it. So Canadians are receiving the government-approved heroin
00:13:26.460 substitute, flipping it on the street for toxic fentanyl, and then dying from overdoses. That's their
00:13:32.060 strategy. That's the best the federal government can do. The report goes on. Drug users have been telling
00:13:36.940 addiction physicians that, like a geyser, diverted hydromorphone flows from these cities to other
00:13:42.860 markets where opioids are rarer and sell for higher prices. Hydromorphone is allegedly being resold
00:13:48.460 across Canada and even in other countries, which is lining the pockets of drug dealers and gangs.
00:13:53.820 A shocking finding which the federal conservatives are rightly outraged over.
00:13:58.220 People are dying because the policies of this Prime Minister are killing them. His policies are flooding
00:14:06.460 the streets with drugs that now go for a dollar a hit. You can buy 26 hits of hydromorphine,
00:14:16.060 which is an analog to heroin, for $30, Mr. Speaker. These are drugs paid for by Canadian tax dollars
00:14:24.860 under a program by this government that has led to a 300% increase in drug overdose deaths.
00:14:31.420 Why won't they get some common sense and dollars for drugs and put our people in treatment?
00:14:35.500 And in response to all of this, Carolyn Bennett, the minister responsible for this nightmare,
00:14:39.900 the minister for addictions and mental health, who also happens to be the minister overseeing the
00:14:44.300 expansion of MAID, completely lost it in the House of Commons. Why do they always start screaming
00:14:50.060 whenever they get exposed like this? Serious question.
00:14:52.300 Mr. Speaker, we are pretty fed up with this fight against evidence-based programs that
00:15:01.100 actually are saving lives. We cannot allow the conservatives to take us back to the failed
00:15:07.420 ideology of the past. Even Harper's advisor, Ben Perrin, thinks they're speaking nonsense. So just stop
00:15:15.740 it and save lives. Let me try and get all of this straight here. The federal government's strategy to
00:15:21.340 try and solve the opioid crisis is to decriminalize all hard drugs in British Columbia, which by the
00:15:28.060 way, the city of Toronto is also now seeking a similar approval for, and to rapidly expand the
00:15:33.740 distribution of safe supply drugs, hydromorphone, which as we can already see, is having the opposite
00:15:40.380 effect. So that's the strategy here. So if you don't want the quote-unquote compassionate out with
00:15:45.660 MAID, you can take a far more aggressive approach with fentanyl in Canada. Because right now,
00:15:50.540 nothing is being done to solve that problem. Ratio of the week time. The winner this week is
00:15:55.580 Carolyn Bennett, who wasn't satisfied after posting her screeching fit in the House of
00:16:00.140 Commons. She followed that up with a little tweet that said,
00:16:03.100 safer supply saves lives. 519 replies to only 293 likes at the time of this recording. And just like
00:16:12.380 you watching, a lot of Canadians on Twitter think that what Carolyn Bennett had to say was
00:16:16.060 completely ludicrous. Ms. Bennett, while you grip onto an ideology proven a failure, people continue
00:16:23.180 to die. Safer supply is an oxymoron. There is nothing safe about illicit drugs. Since decriminalization
00:16:30.300 for possession has taken place in BC, overdose deaths have broken all records. Safe supply equals myth.
00:16:37.740 BC is riddled with disgusting drugs where your government legalized drugs. As someone who recovered from
00:16:43.580 addiction, no, it does not. It creates more addiction and dependency. And yet it doesn't.
00:16:49.420 Go downtown to any city and tell me it's working. It's a post-apocalyptic nightmare. But you know that.
00:16:55.180 If you can't get them through MAID, you'll get them through addiction. We see what you are doing.
00:16:59.020 Well, that's frankly what it looks like, doesn't it? The government wants to expand MAID to make
00:17:02.380 it as liberal as possible to include as many people as they can. And if they're not going to get you
00:17:06.300 through MAID, they're going to flood our cities with black market fentanyl. Toxic fentanyl that is
00:17:10.940 continuing to take lives in this country. What a sad state of affairs that we are living in right now.
00:17:15.900 Reminder to let me know in the comments your answer to the comment question of this episode.
00:17:20.700 Do you agree with the one-third of Canadians that think it is right to extend MAID
00:17:24.700 to Canadians whose sole condition is homelessness or poverty? All right, that's going to do it for
00:17:30.060 us this week on the show. Thank you so much for tuning in. My name is Harrison Faulkner, and this
00:17:33.980 is Raychun.