Juno News - Veteran association invites members to assisted suicide seminar

00:00:00.000 A Royal Canadian Mounted Police Veterans Association is under fire from veterans

00:00:08.860 after it invited members to learn about the government's assisted suicide program.

00:00:14.180 The Liberal government has signaled that it will be launching new consultations

00:00:17.160 to reintroduce failed censorship legislation.

00:00:20.440 Prime Minister Mark Carney has pledged over $1 billion in tax-funded spending

00:00:24.980 to a global health fund for poorer countries.

00:00:27.400 Hello Canada, it's Monday, November 24th, and this is the True North Daily Brief.

00:00:32.260 I'm Isaac Lamoureux.

00:00:33.680 I'm Alex Orton.

00:00:34.860 We've got you covered with all the news you need to know.

00:00:37.100 Let's discuss the top stories of the day and the True North exclusives you won't hear anywhere else.

00:00:44.580 A National Police Association is facing intense backlash after it invited an advocate

00:00:49.260 to educate RCMP veterans on assisted suicide options.

00:00:53.000 A Canadian war veteran, podcaster, and long-time advocate for veterans' mental health,

00:00:57.960 Kelsey Sharon, put the Nova Scotia branch of the RCMP Veterans Association on blast

00:01:03.220 after a 32-year-old police veteran leaked an email.

00:01:06.580 The email advertised an assisted suicide talk to be hosted in an Anglican church.

00:01:11.000 The RCMP Veterans Association of Nova Scotia has sent an email out today and they are having

00:01:19.700 a doctor come into a local church to promote, push, and coerce veterans into assisted suicide.

00:01:29.980 I have a whole article on this one dropping.

00:01:32.120 I just had this leaked to me by a 32-year RCMP veteran who is absolutely livid and so should you.

00:01:38.900 There is an email address here and a phone number.

00:01:42.420 Feel free to let them know how you feel.

00:01:44.360 Also, there's the date and location.

00:01:46.660 It'll also be in the sub stack.

00:01:48.580 I would show up and ask why is it acceptable to be dangling a carrot in front of veterans 0.93

00:01:53.760 who already are struggling with mental health and now have a $4 billion deficit off of the new budget.

00:02:00.180 How is this supposed to help other than push people to self-select and kill themselves?

00:02:05.220 I'm not sure.

00:02:05.880 The email, sent out Thursday, was leaked to Sharon and published in a sub stack article she authored.

00:02:12.180 It invites members to a free, open to the public presentation that, quote,

00:02:16.400 may interest many and discusses the government's, quote, medical assistance in dying program.

00:02:22.400 The speaker is Dr. Gordon Gubitz, the clinical lead for Nova Scotia Health's assisted suicide program.

00:02:28.140 Gubitz also sits on the board for the Canadian Association of Maid Assessors and Providers,

00:02:32.680 the organization that, quote, developed the MAID curriculum for clinicians,

00:02:36.600 which frames government-approved suicide as a compassionate response to suffering and a therapeutic option.

00:02:42.700 Sharon said Gubitz was not a, quote, neutral, independent medical educator,

00:02:47.080 but a clinical gatekeeper for MAID and an ideological engine behind national MAID training. 1.00

00:02:53.280 Sharon's article reads, quote,

00:02:54.780 quote, Nova Scotia RCMP veterans invited a man whose job is to facilitate, provide, and promote nothing but death

00:03:01.320 and whose organization teaches clinicians how to introduce MAID to patients who didn't ask for it, bring it up, or want it in their life.

00:03:09.580 The article said, quote,

00:03:10.980 So, Alex, how did the organizers and some of the pro-assisted suicide groups rationalize hosting this seminar to RCMP veterans?

00:03:35.780 The Canadian Association of MAID Assessors and Providers and the RCMP Veterans Association did not respond to Trunor's request for comments on this story here.

00:03:46.340 They did, however, provide this.

00:03:48.900 They said, quote,

00:03:49.580 Please see the statement below from Helen Long, CEO of Dying with Dignity Canada.

00:03:54.720 While Dying with Dignity Canada is not associated with the presentation being held at St. John the Evangelist Anglican Church Parish with guest speaker Dr. Gordon Gubitz,

00:04:03.000 we believe it is important for people across Canada to be aware of all of their end-of-life options, including medical assistance in dying.

00:04:10.020 Canada has strict MAID eligibility and proper safeguards in place.

00:04:13.980 They also said that the event being shared is a free public event intended to share information to those who choose to attend.

00:04:21.440 Suggesting that an educational event is designed to target or coerce a specific audience is, at best, inaccurate, and at worst, irresponsible.

00:04:29.940 No one can be forced into accessing MAID.

00:04:32.120 It is a decision made by free and informed individuals.

00:04:35.240 Nurse practitioners and physicians in Canada can discuss MAID in the context of end-of-life options,

00:04:39.460 but it is the individual who decides how to proceed once they have been given all their health care options.

00:04:45.080 Information about all health care matters should come from health care providers.

00:04:49.780 Decisions about health care, the organization continued, including MAID, are personal and individual.

00:04:56.300 I find that sort of strange because it does sound like these organizations,

00:05:02.060 if the educational seminars that they're providing aren't helping people access MAID,

00:05:08.560 then they really have no reason to exist in the first place.

00:05:11.100 So I think that there is some level of coercion going on here.

00:05:13.880 Otherwise, what would be the point of these events and these seminars?

00:05:17.780 So I find that a little bit disingenuous, personally.

00:05:23.300 The Liberals are once again attempting to pass their controversial censorship bill,

00:05:27.000 launching new consultations after multiple failed efforts to regulate online content.

00:05:31.260 Minister of Justice Sean Fraser told the Senate during question period

00:05:34.600 that the new online tarred legislation won't be a, quote, copy and paste of its previous two failed bills,

00:05:40.060 first introduced under the Trudeau government in 2021.

00:05:43.180 Adding that the Department of Canadian Heritage has been tasked with making the necessary, quote, reforms,

00:05:48.140 Fraser said Wednesday, quote,

00:05:49.460 there is a consultation process that is now underway.

00:05:52.820 The government's previous attempts to regulate the Internet have been thwarted by significant

00:05:56.920 pushback from the general public and online content creators in particular.

00:06:01.980 Fraser's comments were in response to Senator Christopher Wells,

00:06:04.660 who said Canada still had much work to do in combating hate, in particular online.

00:06:08.940 Wells, a proponent of online regulation, said, quote,

00:06:11.480 In the previous parliament, the government tabled comprehensive legislation to combat online harms,

00:06:16.480 including hate speech through the creation of the new Digital Safety Commission.

00:06:19.900 Does the government remain committed to reintroducing legislation to combat online harms,

00:06:23.860 including the growing radicalization and proliferation of hate on the Internet and through social media?

00:06:28.860 While it may not be a, quote, cut and paste framework,

00:06:31.320 Fraser responded that Canadians should expect the Kearney government to, quote,

00:06:34.620 take action, unquote, to address many of the same issues from the previous proposed legislation.

00:06:40.560 So, Isaac, what were in those previous online censorship bills?

00:06:43.980 And what were some of the major concerns on those bills from civil liberties advocates?

00:06:47.880 Yeah, Alex. So when Sean Fraser talks about not doing a copy and paste bill,

00:06:53.360 what he's referring to are two earlier liberal attempts, Bill C-36 and Bill C-63, the Online Harms Act.

00:07:01.540 Bill C-36 was an earlier Trudeau-era proposal that would have created a kind of federal speech czar.

00:07:07.880 It envisioned a new official with powers to effectively block access to websites deemed harmful,

00:07:13.460 and it died on the order paper when the 2021 election was called.

00:07:17.300 The more recent and much bigger package was Bill C-63.

00:07:21.440 That bill tried to do several things at once, regulate large online platforms,

00:07:25.940 create a new Digital Safety Commission and related bureaucracy,

00:07:29.480 and at the same time rewrite both the Criminal Code and the Canadian Human Rights Act

00:07:34.340 to cover a wide range of harmful or hateful expression online.

00:07:38.200 Civil Liberties Group's main concern was that it didn't just go after clearly criminal material

00:07:45.260 like child exploitation or terrorism, it layered on vague new categories of speech offenses

00:07:50.420 and regulatory duties.

00:07:53.300 For example, Bill C-63 would have required social media companies to remove broadly defined

00:07:58.860 harmful content or face steep penalties, which the Democracy Fund warned would push platforms

00:08:04.320 to over-censor and could amount to mass surveillance and censorship.

00:08:08.440 It also revived the old human rights hate speech regime, letting anyone file complaints over online

00:08:13.240 posts and empowering a tribunal to order content taken down and levy fines up to $70,000.

00:08:19.700 On top of that, the Criminal Code side of the bill was even more controversial.

00:08:23.460 Legal scholars like Michael Geist and Emily Laidlaw pointed out that ordinary offenses could

00:08:28.180 attract a potential life sentence if a judge found they were motivated by hate,

00:08:32.480 and that people could face restrictions based on being reasonably expected to commit a future

00:08:36.780 hate offense with their speech.

00:08:38.580 Critics said that comes perilously close to punishing people for what they might say in

00:08:42.440 the future, not what they've actually done.

00:08:44.340 There were also big structural worries.

00:08:46.800 The proposed Digital Safety Commission, Ombudsperson, and Office would have concentrated rulemaking,

00:08:52.820 enforcement, and quasi-judicial powers in a small group of government appointees.

00:08:56.940 The Canadian Civil Liberties Association and other groups argued that letting one bureaucracy

00:09:01.480 write the rules, police them, and act as a judge and jury undermines basic checks and balances.

00:09:08.940 Finally, groups like the Democracy Fund, the Canadian Constitution Foundation, and public critics

00:09:14.680 from across the spectrum, including even Margaret Atwood, argued that much of what the bill

00:09:19.720 claimed to target is already covered by existing criminal law.

00:09:23.060 Their position has been, if there are genuine gaps around things like child exploitation,

00:09:27.120 those should be fixed narrowly, rather than using that concern as a vehicle for a much broader

00:09:32.320 online speech control regime.

00:09:34.860 And one thing I'll add is that this might be something that people remembered, but former

00:09:40.780 True North journalist Andrew Lawton asked Pierre Paliyev at a press conference about the hate

00:09:46.400 speech law back in the day.

00:09:48.400 And Pierre said something along the lines of, are we really expecting people like Justin

00:09:54.060 Trudeau to determine what hate speech is?

00:09:57.320 And then he again referenced some comments Trudeau made during the convoy that were clearly,

00:10:03.180 clearly hate speech against anybody who is not trying to be coerced into taking a vaccine.

00:10:08.640 Taxpayers are on the hook for over $1 billion after Prime Minister Mark Carney pledged new funding

00:10:17.220 to a global health fund ahead of the G20 summit in South Africa.

00:10:20.280 The $1.02 billion commitment was announced Friday in Johannesburg by Cindy Timorjian,

00:10:26.940 Carney's personal representative to the G20.

00:10:29.640 The funds will support the Global Fund's programming from 2027 through 2029.

00:10:34.140 The Global Fund combats infectious diseases in the world's poorest countries by supplying

00:10:38.860 mosquito nets, diagnostics, and treatment for malaria, tuberculosis, and HIV.

00:10:45.480 Canada has supported the organization since its launch in 2002.

00:10:49.700 Canada's G20 visit follows a stop in the United Arab Emirates earlier this week where the federal

00:10:54.520 government announced a prospective $70 billion in future investments.

00:10:58.380 However, no binding commitments were signed.

00:11:00.680 Instead, UAE officials pledged potential funding for Canadian critical minerals projects,

00:11:05.320 but without details or timelines.

00:11:07.720 The $1.02 billion pledge aligns with Canada's historical support for global health efforts,

00:11:12.660 but comes as inflation, housing costs, and spending restraint remain key domestic political concerns.

00:11:19.260 Ottawa's continued international funding commitments have drawn criticism in light of federal program

00:11:23.540 reviews and domestic affordability issues.

00:11:25.740 So, Alex, how does Canada's contributions compare with those of other developed countries?

00:11:31.720 Well, first off, I'll preface this by just saying that I don't necessarily agree with this

00:11:35.760 sort of globalist organization funding, especially, as you mentioned, during a cost-of-lutid crisis

00:11:40.500 in Canada.

00:11:41.780 But I will answer the question.

00:11:43.120 I think it's an interesting one.

00:11:44.500 Canada's latest commitment of just over $1 billion, the Global Fund may sound enormous,

00:11:49.040 and frankly, it is, but it's actually not the biggest contribution.

00:11:54.520 The United States, historically speaking, was the largest contributor by far to these types

00:11:59.240 of funds.

00:11:59.720 I believe they've contributed over $4 billion in the last round.

00:12:02.760 It's not clear if they're going to be contributing anything under the current administration in

00:12:06.280 the United States.

00:12:07.840 Germany and the UK have also scaled down, despite being typically heavyweights in this area.

00:12:12.320 Canada, and so it looks as though, sadly, even though we struggle with things like healthcare

00:12:16.920 and housing in Canada, Canada is having to take a bit of an interventionist, I guess you could

00:12:22.000 say, approach on continuing to keep these organizations funded.

00:12:26.560 And I can see why that doesn't necessarily sit well with Canadian taxpayers at a time like this.

00:12:34.060 That's it for today, folks.

00:12:35.320 Thanks for tuning in.

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Juno News - November 24, 2025

Veteran association invites members to assisted suicide seminar

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