Juno News - New documentary exposes dark side of MAiD

00:00:00.000 You're tuned in to The Andrew Lawton Show.

00:00:08.880 Now, as far as why I'm so aghast by, maybe that's a strong word, certainly why I'm so frustrated by

00:00:17.320 the inability of Canadian society to have this conversation is because when you do have issues

00:00:24.540 where social conservatives have been the ones leading the charge on very significant issues,

00:00:29.480 like, for example, against the expansion of assisted suicide in Canada, you get the same

00:00:35.100 people who just completely do not want to engage in any question about life that try to shut it

00:00:40.940 down. This is an issue just to remind you of some context. I've talked about this in the past,

00:00:46.040 so I'm going to give the 45-second summary here. I have a belief in life as a Christian, but I also,

00:00:52.940 as someone who survived a very nearly successful suicide attempt more than 14 years ago, or almost

00:00:58.880 14 years ago, I have a hugely, hugely deep connection to this idea that what the liberals are doing is

00:01:07.440 atrocious and trying to expand access to assisted suicide, to euthanasia, to MAID, whatever you want

00:01:13.400 to call it, to people who are struggling only with a mental illness. Not someone with MS whose life is

00:01:19.420 coming to its natural end as it is, but people who may get up one day and decide they don't want to end

00:01:25.540 their life. And instead of them being treated for that, they are met with the government helping

00:01:30.600 them with it. This is my concern about someone with a serious depression, for example, in a regime like 0.91

00:01:35.980 what the liberals are pushing Canada towards. This has been, among other issues connected to assisted

00:01:41.340 suicide, been put under the microscope by a new documentary produced by the Rebel News crew,

00:01:47.360 specifically, Kian Simone and Sheila Gunn-Reed. Here's a little glimpse at this.

00:01:53.420 And I said, how did they come to the conclusion that I was going to die?

00:01:57.800 He said, because they didn't really know what to do with you.

00:02:00.800 The government of Canada is killing Canadians, and not just a few, and not just the terminally ill.

00:02:05.920 Over 50,000. So far, 50,000.

00:02:08.920 There is a startling new development in the ongoing controversy around veterans being offered

00:02:14.680 medical assistance in dying. Instead of help, are you familiar with our MAID program? They said,

00:02:19.940 well, it's better than blowing your brains out against the wall. They essentially evicted us

00:02:24.280 from our buildings because we would not participate in this government euthanasia program. Canadians are

00:02:30.080 expecting us to get the job done. Fraser Health is refusing to give information, and because of that,

00:02:37.400 the police investigation had to close. Therefore, Fraser Health is covering information up.

00:02:43.480 And we know for a fact that our people in power do not take responsibility for anything.

00:02:49.740 Right.

00:02:50.120 So it's a financial save, a lack of responsibility, and then it's completely easy to just

00:02:55.940 offer it to vulnerable individuals, and then they're going to take it.

00:03:00.580 That is a clip of the trailer for MAID, the dark side of Canadian compassion. It came out a couple of weeks ago.

00:03:07.640 The reason I didn't want to do an interview about it is because I wanted to see it first,

00:03:11.020 and I had to wait to do that because I knew they were coming to Elmer, Ontario, a lovely little town not far from me.

00:03:17.160 And I saw it last week at long last, and I didn't make the trailer, but I am in the documentary.

00:03:22.200 I did an interview with Sheila and Kian, which I was very grateful to do, talking about my own experience here.

00:03:28.540 Sheila Gunn-Reed, the editor-in-chief of Rebel News, joins us now.

00:03:33.000 Sheila, I know you've done quite the tour on this, so congratulations and thanks for coming on.

00:03:37.200 Yeah, it's been a grueling tour, but I think the documentary has been well-received,

00:03:43.280 and sometimes we're sort of met with shock because people who are fundamentally opposed to the government

00:03:48.940 helping you off this mortal coil are surprised at just how bad it is out there.

00:03:55.880 When we decided to make this documentary, and we put a call out for stories,

00:04:00.360 but we also put a call out for fundraising. We did this all entirely without any government help,

00:04:07.640 unlike many documentaries made in this country. But our emails were sort of inundated

00:04:12.500 with people from two sides of the debate. We had people saying,

00:04:18.080 you guys, it's definitely not as bad as you say it is. This is just for people who are in 1.00

00:04:25.020 unbearable suffering at the end of their life, and who are we to say that they should suffer more?

00:04:30.640 And then the other 50% of our emails were saying, it's so bad, but it's much worse than you think,

00:04:37.900 and here's my outrageous story. And we thought, boy, we've got to use the 50% of these people

00:04:43.640 to inform the other 50%. And it was the reason the documentary sort of came to life the way it did.

00:04:49.240 You touch on this there, and I think the documentary deals with this complexity to some extent as well.

00:04:55.840 There's more of a spectrum of opinions on this than a binary. I mean, you certainly have your

00:04:59.840 people that are against any made whatsoever, any assisted suicide whatsoever. And then you get

00:05:05.540 people on the other side that, you know, the quote unquote, dying with dignity people that basically

00:05:09.460 think it should be no different than, you know, ordering a book off Amazon, you just one day say,

00:05:13.700 I want it. There are a lot of shades of gray in this. And, you know, people that, for example,

00:05:18.620 would have no issue or at least no legal issue with someone that fits how it was originally

00:05:24.900 presented of someone who is terminally ill, they're in a lot of pain, people know with near

00:05:30.800 certainty, they're going to die, things will not improve. And they voluntarily and of sound mind

00:05:36.460 make the decision versus what we're seeing now, which is an expansion to minors, potentially an

00:05:42.520 expansion to people who have a mental illness, which is by definition, a disease of the mind.

00:05:46.720 Right. So you've raised your hand there and acknowledge, you know, where you fit on this.

00:05:50.820 But, but how do you deal with that issue of where there are people that, you know, are fine with it

00:05:56.640 to a point, but not the point that the government is taking it?

00:05:59.960 You know, we included their voices in the documentary, we tried to make the documentary

00:06:04.080 as accessible as possible.

00:06:08.400 Well, and I should think your co-producer himself is not as black and white as you are on this. 0.88

00:06:12.040 That's exactly it. And that's why I love working with Kian is because he comes to these documentaries

00:06:15.960 with a very open mind. He's there to learn, he's there to listen. And, you know, as I do with

00:06:22.740 everything at Rebel News, I lead with my chin, I tell you exactly where I'm coming from. But we did

00:06:27.500 include the voices of the people who would be okay with made under the first track that where death

00:06:36.160 is imminent. People are suffering from a terminal illness and their suffering is, according to them,

00:06:43.260 unbearable. We included, for example, Michelle Sterling. People may know her as the communications 0.76

00:06:49.080 director of Friends of Science. And her story was so important because her brother was suffering

00:06:55.320 from a terminal degenerative illness and he chose MAID. And the family was very involved. They were not

00:07:01.840 shut out of it. There were interviews to make sure there were no evidence of coercion taking place.

00:07:09.360 It was a very holistic approach. Now, whether you agree with that or not, that's up to the individual.

00:07:16.140 But even for Michelle, where her brother access MAID versus where it is now, she says in the documentary,

00:07:22.660 I'm mortified. I'm horrified that this is where it's gotten. And so for, you know, religious pro-lifers

00:07:29.300 like me, we were always talking about the slippery slope. We have to show where it started and now

00:07:35.860 we're showing where it's ending. Yeah. And I think that's one of the responses to this, which is that

00:07:41.760 the second category that we described is an inevitability from the first. And I think you

00:07:46.480 look at a lot of the activists on this, you know, originally when this was coming up before the

00:07:51.240 Supreme Court, I mean, going back to the Rodriguez case, but more recently the charter case,

00:07:55.800 they kept it so narrow. And then the second, the second they got that, it all of a sudden expanded.

00:08:02.500 This is too restrictive. It's too difficult. We need to bring it more. And at a certain point,

00:08:06.860 I mean, what's the next frontier? Because I actually don't believe we've hit rock bottom on this.

00:08:11.360 Not even close. Not even close. So the next frontier, I think, is probably mature minors.

00:08:16.320 We've seen some precedent for that in recent Canadian history where we have activists saying,

00:08:21.200 yes, it is completely up to a 16-year-old to make all sorts of irreversible medical decisions about

00:08:29.600 their body with regard to gender transition. So that's already out there. We also know that

00:08:35.600 during the pandemic, there was this push to say that kids can go behind their parents' backs

00:08:40.080 and get vaccinated. And if you look at what's happening in some of the other extreme

00:08:44.900 made regimes of the world, I hate even calling it made. I mean, it's euthanasia. It's government

00:08:51.040 killing is what it really is. Made is just a euphemism to hide exactly what this is. But if we

00:08:58.060 look at some of these other jurisdictions, we have followed in their footsteps almost directly. And so

00:09:03.720 in Holland and Belgium, they're already euthanizing mature minors, and they're also euthanizing people

00:09:10.620 who are just done with living. There's nothing wrong with them. They're not depressed. They're

00:09:15.560 not anything. They're just over it. And so they are euthanizing those people too. And what we've

00:09:22.700 seen Belgium and Holland take two decades to get to, we've accelerated into it in five, six years.

00:09:29.600 It's easy to look at Justin Trudeau and say all sorts of things about him and his government on this. But

00:09:34.660 do you get a sense from your research of the why? Of what is it about the fabric of Canada

00:09:41.440 that made us, you know, basically the leader in a category I don't think we want to be leaders in

00:09:47.320 on this issue, even, you know, surpassing in some cases, certainly catching up to these European 0.99

00:09:51.880 countries that always used to seem a world away when we did that comparison?

00:09:56.600 Yeah, there's a, I think, and I'm, you know, I'm speculating here. I don't really know what's

00:10:02.000 going on in the mind of Justin Trudeau. I don't know if Justin Trudeau what's knows what's going

00:10:05.720 on in the mind of Justin Trudeau most days, but I think we've got a couple of different things at

00:10:10.520 play here. So we've got a socialized healthcare system where rationing is built in and with

00:10:16.020 rationing comes delays in care and with delays in care comes suffering. And so there has to be a

00:10:21.960 solution to that suffering. And so a lot of people are opting to die rather than continue to wait

00:10:30.700 and languish in the pain and suffering that our socialized medical system is offering them. So

00:10:37.220 that's the thing that this tidies up some weight lines with access to care. But also we've got this

00:10:43.820 extreme focus on equality at all costs. And what I mean by that is the reason that MAID is being

00:10:51.960 expanded to encompass the mentally ill is this idea of recognizing the equality of suffering.

00:11:00.700 So we've already said, look, if you're suffering from a physical, biological illness that is

00:11:07.040 irremediable, then you should have access to government assisted suicide. And so the health

00:11:13.560 minister has said, well, we recognize that your mental suffering is completely on par with this

00:11:20.400 irremediable physical suffering. And so thanks to this radical equality, we have to consider both

00:11:27.940 illnesses to be the same. And so that's where we are now.

00:11:33.280 There's also an aspect culturally in Canada that I would posit and solicit your feedback on, which is

00:11:39.240 that the government control of health care, the centralization of health care in Canada has in a

00:11:45.100 lot of ways taken that moral ownership of health care away from Canadians. And some people are willingly

00:11:52.080 going along with this. A lot of people will cling to the Canadian health care system with their

00:11:56.400 dying breath, ironically enough, even if the health care system contributed to the dying breath. But

00:12:01.180 you have others that are frustrated with it. But regardless, we use, I mean, how often is a policy

00:12:08.000 in Canada sold to us because, oh, well, if we don't do this, it's going to cost the health care system.

00:12:12.880 If we don't do this, you know, it's the justification for restrictions on junk food. It's the justification for

00:12:18.840 everything. It's, well, we have to pay for the health care. So I think there is a cynicism that is

00:12:23.740 fairly well supported in that, I think, I believe.

00:12:26.520 Yeah, I mean, we just went through three years of lockdowns. And they said our strained health care

00:12:31.860 system that we all have to pay for would not survive unless we listened to the guy in the

00:12:37.740 white coat or in Alberta's case, the lady with the harsh bangs at the podium every day telling us 0.97

00:12:45.940 exactly what we needed to do to protect the health care system. So we have a society of, and there are

00:12:50.900 still people doing those things, despite the fact that we are hearing more and more every day that

00:12:55.600 the restrictions by and large didn't work and were just pulled out of the ether one day and then

00:13:01.940 proliferated across society. And we were all following the lines on the floor as though the

00:13:06.500 COVID only traveled in one direction past the craft dinner. And so we've got an entire society of people

00:13:12.580 who are still doing those things, meaning they are completely unskeptical about the guy in the

00:13:20.340 white coat telling them what needs to happen with their health. And that worries me. That worries me

00:13:27.240 because there's a sort of sinister passive suggestion to some people that we've heard about

00:13:33.400 that, well, you know what, you're going to be suffering. You don't have long left. Listen to me,

00:13:41.140 I'm a doctor. Maybe you should consider MAID. That worries me because we have a story in our

00:13:47.200 documentary of a family who were complete COVID skeptics. And thanks to their skepticism of

00:13:52.920 doctors on TV and doctors saying things to them that didn't make sense, their grandma is alive today

00:13:59.640 because she was sent to palliative care and she was suggested MAID. And they said, no, no, no. And

00:14:04.400 they kept going and going and going until they got an opinion that they thought made sense. And thanks

00:14:10.820 to that she's alive today. But on the flip side, we know now that there's a huge segment of the

00:14:16.840 population that are just ready and willing to go along with the doctor in the white coat, no matter 0.53

00:14:22.680 what that doctor says. That story you shared from the documentary was quite a gripping one where you

00:14:27.600 had multiple people in the healthcare system that had literally just sentenced this woman to death

00:14:32.240 by saying that, oh yeah, she's, she's going to die. Using that to then justify the idea that,

00:14:37.160 oh, well, death is imminent. So, and, and again, they, they just knew instinctively that something

00:14:42.800 about that didn't make sense. And, you know, there she was sitting down talking to you, however long

00:14:46.980 later. One thing I'm just curious about, because you, again, raised your hand on that, you know,

00:14:51.900 absolutist position on MAID. You've also been unequivocal on, you know, the issue of bodily

00:14:57.160 autonomy throughout COVID. And I'm, I'm curious for you, how you, how you draw a line between the

00:15:03.080 two, because this is where my libertarianism, uh, butts up against my belief in life as well,

00:15:07.840 is that in the case with someone completely of sound mind, how do you say you shouldn't have this

00:15:14.620 tool available to you legally? Okay. So for me, the issue of bodily autonomy is also the same issue.

00:15:21.500 For me, it's that, uh, I believe in the dignity of human life and I believe in the integrity of the

00:15:35.960 human body. And so I don't find my two positions indistinguishable. I think they're the same

00:15:42.280 position. I don't think the government should be helping people die. It's terrible that we cannot

00:15:48.960 prevent people from taking their own life. I think in our documentary, we offer solutions,

00:15:54.280 um, instead of waiting around for the government to change the culture around MAID, we can do that

00:15:59.040 in our own communities. Um, but of course I believe in bodily autonomy. I don't think the government

00:16:05.440 should be telling you what to do with your body, but I also believe in the dignity and the value of

00:16:11.360 the human being. And so that's, that's kind of how I get my head around these two issues.

00:16:16.760 And, and even the dignity point is incredibly important because even if one were to accept

00:16:21.980 as a premise that there should be a certain circumstances under which MAID is, is legal

00:16:26.580 and available, how many people of those who choose that would go that road if they were treated with

00:16:33.140 dignity, if they felt like they had access to palliative care, if they felt they had a support

00:16:38.040 system around them, if all of the options available were shared to them, shared with them. And I think

00:16:43.500 that's so key. And you see that same discussion with abortion, which is that again, even if you

00:16:48.000 believe it should be there as a, as a point of last resort, a lot of people will not choose that

00:16:53.340 if they have access to information along the way about alternatives.

00:16:57.420 Yeah, I completely agree with that. I mean, we don't discuss what palliative care is. It's a 50 year

00:17:02.860 medical discipline and it is making advances all the time in pain management. And so we have a lot

00:17:09.760 of people in Canada who are scared about suffering about the end of life. And look, I'll, again,

00:17:15.400 lead with my chin. I'm Catholic. We lean into the suffering, right? So I, I, I, I, I'm not scared

00:17:21.160 of that, but I know a lot of people are scared of, of the pain of the end of life. And that is

00:17:27.400 changing rapidly. And we're, instead of putting money into palliative care, we're taking money out

00:17:33.180 of palliative care to fund MAID. And I think that is a, a great tragedy.

00:17:40.020 Sheila Gunn-Reed, one of the producers of the new, new-ish documentary. It's not as new,

00:17:45.420 but like I said, I wanted to see it first and then I learned I could see it in person. So

00:17:48.600 I wanted to do that, but it's called Made the Dark Side of Canadian Compassion. Thank you so much for

00:17:53.540 reaching out to me and allowing me to be a part of that in my own little way, Sheila. Thank you.

00:17:57.840 Thanks very much. And Andrew, just thank you so much for being so raw and honest with us in that

00:18:02.960 documentary. Your perspective was so vital to shed light on just, you know, the other side of the

00:18:11.000 mental health issue. Well, it's kind of you to say thank you very much. Thanks for listening to

00:18:15.160 The Andrew Lawton Show. Support the program by donating to True North at www.tnc.news.

Juno News - June 16, 2024

New documentary exposes dark side of MAiD

Episode Stats

Summary

Transcript