MAID violations widespread, ethicist says
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Summary
In this episode, I speak with Alexander Raikin, a visiting fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center, who focuses on dignity of human life and end of life issues. He has done a few investigative pieces on this topic, and I thought it was very relevant considering the case where a 38-year-old Canadian man with youth euthanized, and his heart was donated to a 59-year old American man.
Transcript
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Hello, everyone. My name is Leah Muschett. I'm a reporter here at the Western Standard. And
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today I have a guest named Alexander Raikin. He is a visiting fellow in the bioethics technology
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and human flourishing program at the ethics and public policy center. He focuses his research on
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dignity of human life and end of life issues, which also is related to our topic today, which is
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made. He's done a few investigative pieces on this issue. And I thought it was very relevant
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considering in the news of past past month, there has been a case where a 38 year old Canadian man
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with youth euthanized, and his heart was donated to a 59 year old American man. So this is also
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relevant because you're also based in the US right now in Washington. So but anyways,
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my first question to you is, in your investigative work, you were talking a lot about how lots of
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there's been lots of non compliance issues by medical practitioners in MAID, especially in Ontario,
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in Quebec, at least there's been basically like audits on the topic of this. So why don't you tell
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us a little bit how these medical professionals haven't been following following criminal law in
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regards to Yeah, yeah, I mean, that's a great question. So I would also say, having grown up in
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Canada, I also feel that my heart is in Canada, even though I'm working in the US. But this is pretty
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grim. So it will, to start out with, in theory, Canada should have one of the strictest laws on
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euthanasia, because it's written in our criminal code, right? So it's in the criminal code of Canada
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that MAID is theoretically regulated and legalized. The issues is that sometimes those legal safeguards
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are not being followed by practitioners. So I wrote a report that looked in Ontario,
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the chief coroner of Ontario found somewhere around that one in four MAID providers were failing to
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follow some sort of regulation or law. In Quebec, we know that there are, you know, as of now,
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there have been hundreds of cases where MAID practitioners failed to follow the law. And in fact,
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every single annual report since I believe something like 2022, in Quebec, by Quebec's independent
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commission that audits these sort of MAID reports that you were talking about, they actually invented
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a new category of underlying illness that qualifies for MAID, which is, to wit, no illness that qualifies
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under Quebec's law, right? So they're literally recording under, you know, when they're detailing
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patients who died from underlying illness with cancer, with, you know, with different types of
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cancers, with ALS, and then there's also reporting category of no illness that would qualify under
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Quebec's provincial law, right? And this is official provincial reporting. So I think that that should
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tell you sort of, A, the scale, and B, the extent that this is happening. And the fact also of that there's
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pretty much no real consequences for medical practitioners who violate the criminal code in Canada.
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Yeah, that's actually insane, because if they're violating the criminal code, like, why aren't they
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receiving any punishment? But in that regards, so even though, so they're violating the law,
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and they've been audited by, I don't recall the names of the people who were auditing them,
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but in those cases, did you read any, like, statements by the two men, the Ontario person and the
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Quebec person, saying, like, these people should be punished in some way, they should be at least,
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like, reprimanded, or we should introduce these new standards, like, anything like that?
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So the problem is, okay, the problem is really with, like, the prosecutors in those provinces,
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and the problems with the Minister of Justice in those provinces. So for instance,
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the independent commissions, it's Commission sur les soins de la vie, or like Commission on End of Life
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in Quebec, that commission doesn't have any powers on its own to, well, to discipline anyone, right?
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All that they're doing is that they're looking at the chart reviews of different made devs,
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and then they're determining if those made devs follow the law or didn't follow the law.
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Then they're sending those out to every single case to the Quebec's College of Health,
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the Quebec's College of Health, Quebec's College of Physicians.
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And then the Quebec's College of Physicians has then the ability to then further send those on
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to the police. The issue is that the Quebec's College of Physicians, even in those cases where the
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people who died from under pain did not have an illness that would qualify under Quebec's law,
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and under, you know, under the federal law on MAID. Even in those cases, the Quebec's College of
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Physicians has refused to really entertain any serious investigation. You know, I also reported
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earlier that there was a physician who was, you know, who warned about the cases of, or who
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who cautioned against legalizing MAID for people with dementia. And then, and he tested like this
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in Parliament, right, so in Ottawa. And the Quebec's College of Physicians response was to investigate him
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for spreading misinformation. Okay, so they're investigating the completely wrong people.
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And in that case, it was completely, you know, they found that he committed nothing untoward,
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considering he was testifying to a parliamentary committee. And this is also, I should also say,
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the Quebec's College of Physicians is also the same college that was urging Parliament to expand
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euthanasia to neonates, right, to infants. Which, Inclusion Canada, which is one of the leading
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disability organizations in Canada for children and adults with intellectual disabilities,
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refer to that as simply murder. So that's on Quebec's side. On Ontario's side, I can't really
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explain. The coroner of Ontario, he has not sent a single case to the police to investigate. The coroner
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has, the provincial coroner in Ontario has a lot of powers that you could use to actually
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investigate some of these cases. And we know that, you know, if you do not follow the exact detailed
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safeguards and eligibility criteria under Canada's federal law, that you are breaking a criminal law.
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Whatever reason, the chief coroner of Ontario has not really done anything about that. And in fact,
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he's been, and this is a problem that's been going on for many, many years. The last public
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statement that the chief coroner of Ontario made was a letter to every single Ontario healthcare
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practitioner warning of repeated compliance concerns with MAID, with MAID providers, excuse me,
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not following the criminal code, right? So he was referring to violations, compliance concerns with the
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criminal code. In a healthy, normal society, that would raise red flags. And after the chief coroner
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of Ontario warned about this, that was the last public statement, but then he made many, many
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other statements to, internally to physicians and nurses, including MAID providers, that he also,
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that that exact same problem has continued over the years and in many ways has actually expanded
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with the number of violations rising quite precipitously. And yet there's been nothing,
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right? There's been nothing that was done. One of the results of actually my reporting on this,
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sorry, you have to laugh because it's so absurd, was that I sent a question to the chief coroner of Ontario
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and I should also mention, it's been the same chief coroner, I believe, since the paint has been
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legalized. I think he was on that job, which was 2015, where it was effectively decriminalized in 2016,
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when it was legalized. But I sent an email, you know, asking him about these issues and what he was
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thinking about it. And, you know, I also mentioned that under his office's interpretation of the federal
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rules, that if there was a minor who was euthanized, that according to the consequences
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that he reported, that he would not refer to that case to the police, right? So in that hypothetical
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situation of a minor getting, being euthanized. And I asked him, why is that? And his response was,
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on second thought, I would actually report that to the police. So he did update that on.
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On the provincial. I think that kind of tells you everything, right? Like under candidate,
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in the criminal code, right? It explicitly says, it explicitly states different eligibility criteria,
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right? So you need to have a qualifying illness or disability. You need to
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you need to, you need to be over the age of 18. It needs to be in an advanced state of decline,
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right? And there's other eligibility criteria and safeguards, or theoretical safeguards, I should say,
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that are opposed, that are part of all this. And if you think that a minor being euthanized is not
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something that you would immediately report to the police, as not only as a healthcare practitioner,
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but as a public bureaucrat, what are we even doing here? And I think it explains a lot of this.
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There was another case that I also reported on, which was the chief coroner of Ontario describing
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a blaming case where a maid provider just plainly didn't follow the law. I mean, in that case,
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according to the chief coroner of Ontario, the maid provider didn't even know any of the rules,
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and she didn't know what the protocol was. She used the wrong medication,
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according to chief coroner's office, or according to chief coroner of Ontario,
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the patient and the family suffered tremendously from that. It was definitely not a quote, unquote,
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dignified death. And the response to that, to that blatant violation, was not even a license
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suspension, right? So this physician is still practicing medicine in Ontario, last time I checked.
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She was only not allowed to practice palliative care, unless she was supervised, and she was not
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allowed to provide assessments or to perform euthanasia. But think what this means, right? If
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if you don't even know any of the safeguards, right, and you essentially torture a patient
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with just providing whatever ad hoc medical supplies you have that you believe will kill the patient.
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And the response to quite blatantly, according to chief coroner of Ontario, is causing suffering to
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the patient and the family. And the response to that is that you can still remain a physician in
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good standing in Ontario. I mean, it shows that the criminal safeguards aren't worth anything.
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They're not being forced, they're not being followed. And patients and family members are
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suffering tremendously from it. Yeah, wow. Yeah. Like, from all that you've said so far,
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it just makes me think like, there has to be is there like incentives for people to like,
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have like, have like a certain number of like maid patients? Yeah, I mean, it's fee by service,
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like anything else in medicine, right? So, or fee per service, excuse me. So yeah, I mean, there's
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really, you know, if you're being paid by the maid assessment, and you're being paid by the
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maid provision, we we know that look, the vast majority of physicians and nurses in Canada do
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not want to do anything with maid, right? They do not provide assessments, they do not do maid provisions.
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People who do maid assessments and maid provisions, there are very small percentage of available of
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Canada's total physicians and nurse practitioners. And for some of them, I just proportion a few,
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that is their primary way of making money. And that is their primary medical, you know, specialization.
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So we have in Canada, maid physicians who have provided hundreds of cases. I believe in Ontario,
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I believe in Ontario, there was the there was one maid provider who in 2023 performed almost one maid
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provision every single working day. So I mean, you have a select few who have done hundreds, if not
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thousands by now, maid provisions, right? And maid provisions is, let's not be coy about what the
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language means, right? It is explicitly ending the life of a patient through lethal injection,
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right? Like this, this sugar coating of language, I feel is part of the problem.
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And I also just say just one last thing about this, is that in the US, there's a whole scandal over
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lethal injection of prisoners, right, that this is inhumane, that it is not a dignified death,
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etc, etc. Well, the US struggles to perform something like 10 capital punishments, executions
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a year. Whereas in Canada, we're now nearing at almost 15,000, over 15,000 maid debts a year.
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So we're talking about a massive, massive number of what is effectively what are effectively lethal
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injections. And there's been surprisingly little interest in the media about what that actually
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entails. And what I worry is that a lot of it on a second look, looks a lot closer to get to the
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American experience, rather than a sort of dignified death that proponents are talking about.
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Yeah, that's literally when you're talking stuff, I'm like, yeah, it doesn't make any sense. Like,
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why hasn't there been more attention on this? Obviously, you've done good work on it. But like,
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yeah, I even remember like the case I mentioned earlier, the 38 year old man who got euthanized,
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I know, it's not exactly like there wasn't evidence that there was non compliance or whatever. But
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the fact that that happened as well, I just think there wasn't that much media coverage,
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And I should also say, just on that, Canada is leading the world in organ donations post-Meg.
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What one of the reasons for that is, again, it is so absurd. It's very difficult to understand
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how we got to this point. Because the original guidelines in Canada, when MAID was first legalized,
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was that organ donations would only be possible, like soliciting for organ donations would only be
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possible after someone is already fully approved for MAID. This is the procedure in the Netherlands,
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for instance, right, that organ donations are only possible once someone is approved for MAID,
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because if you offer organ donations as a pathway, especially if someone is struggling with
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depression, especially if someone has a serious illness at the same time, that would be very
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difficult for it to be, for them to choose in sort of unbiased, uncoerced way to donate their organs.
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That is, I mean, I think that if you ask a random person on the street, I think most people,
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and especially most medical practitioners, would support that policy. The issue is that Canada
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became the first jurisdiction in the world to recommend MAID providers to offer organ donations,
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even before someone is fully approved for MAID, right? So it is policy to offer organ donations
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for people who are applying for MAID after only their first approval by the first MAID provider
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or assessor, right? And as part of the legal process is you still have to go for a second assessor.
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But instead of waiting for that process to finish, right, it's literally in the MAID process itself,
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right? The person hasn't been fully approved for MAID, which is to say they haven't been approved for MAID.
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They're being asked about organ donations, if they otherwise qualify therapeutically for that.
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Yeah. So this is, I mean, this is crazy. In my humble opinion, that exists a lot of the sort of,
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just the massive expansion in MAID and MAID organ donations.
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Mm-hmm. No, like, it is crazy. And I guess I have another question for you. So since you said, like,
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Canada is the first country to, like, offer it before even they have decided that they are a candidate
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for MAID, I just, like, I'm just thinking, is it, is this just a consequence of just even allowing, like,
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these provisions to even have MAID? Is, like, is there even a way to regulate this so none of this
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would happen? Or are we so far gone that it's just, like, you can't do anything? Like, it's just,
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I don't know. It just seems so corrupt that, yeah, that's my question.
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Yeah, no, I mean, I think that's an excellent question. And I mean, like, I'll, my personal
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opinions, my personal opinion is I don't think it's possible to regulate a safe practice of an
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assisted death. I think that when healers, when the role of a healer is being corrupted into the role of
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a killer, no matter how you couch that language, it ultimately leads to dangerous consequences,
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like what we're seeing right now in Canada. I mean, Canada's MAID program, that said, Canada's MAID
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program is especially, it goes above and beyond of the normal problems with assisted dying. Canada's MAID
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program is almost a pariah on an international stage. The state of New York, which just recently
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voted in the state Senate to legalize assisted suicide, one of the reasons that it passed on a
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very narrow vote was because the proponents of that bill specified that their assisted suicide bill
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would look nothing like Canada's. In the UK, there was also another close vote. Proponents had to
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distance themselves from Canada's euthanasia program, even though at the beginning, you know,
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they actually supported Canada's euthanasia program. So we're really talking about a program
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that is internationally viewed as a system not working. And look, the reason that assisted suicide
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and euthanasia are legal in Canada is because the Supreme Court of Canada, after barely 20 years,
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after it in the Rodriguez case, when it said that there was not a constitutional right for euthanasia,
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then changed its mind, and then unanimously said there all of a sudden is a right for euthanasia.
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I think the logic of that is very flawed, and it's very weak. And it definitely has not been held
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up by Canada's example. But that is why is legal, legal in Canada, Canada's parliament voted many,
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many, many, many times, you know, I think close to a dozen times against legalizing this,
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prior to the Supreme Court case. So all of that said, it is still possible to have basic common
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sense safeguards. You know, the right now there's a bill, there's a bill that's that was proposed
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in Parliament to stop Canada's expansion of MAID purely for mental illness. If this bill doesn't pass,
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then in 20, then in 2027, I believe, Canada is going to expand euthanasia to include people whose
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only diagnosed conditions will be things like depression. So I, you know, I think that is a
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very common sensical safeguard that can be implemented now. And, you know, I don't want to
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go on and on and on. But I do worry tremendously about where Canada is going. Now, I wrote another
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report that MAID in Canada is now the fifth most common cause of death. And it's going to, and I
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think that's only going to increase over time. I think the issues are another sort of statistic that
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I that's hard to grapple. Do you know how long the wait time is to get the median wait time to get a
00:22:23.280
CT scan in Canada? No, unfortunately, fortunately. Yeah, yeah, that's fortunate. But it's 40 days.
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Okay, so it's 40 days. This is odd. This this isn't an elective procedure, right? Like this is a
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priority procedure. No one goes to their family physician says, you know, I really want I want a
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CT scan. Right? Yeah, this is, you know, this is one of the you know, this is this has to be
00:22:47.920
recommended to you by your physician. And they have to file that in, okay, the median wait time in 2023
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to, to tell orally, your physician or nurse practitioner that you want to die for MAID,
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get the paperwork, complete the paperwork, find the witnesses for it, find your first MAID assessor,
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which either has to be a physician or a practitioner, get get find your second MAID assessor,
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which has to be a physician or nurse practitioner, get those appointments, go through those meetings,
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get approved by both of them. Finalize your end of life plans, schedule your your death, schedule your
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funeral, schedule your final end of life matters. And then go to that your your MAID procedure and die
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that entire process, the median weight, the median number of days to complete that from request to death
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for MAID in 2023 was only 13 days. Oh, my God, less than two weeks, less than two weeks, right? Versus the median
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wait time for a CT scan, right? So 50% of people have a longer wait time for that. To get a CT scan,
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right? It is more than a month, right? Like, this is this where we're at. And I think that Canada's
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healthcare system is is massively struggling. The former the past head of the Canadian Medical
00:24:15.120
Association described Canada's healthcare system as undergoing a collapse. We're the only country
00:24:20.960
country in the world with a public healthcare system that has no private option whatsoever,
00:24:27.680
right? It is against law to to sell your service. As a physician, if there's a public health option,
00:24:35.280
you know, where you can as healthcare system is is massively, massively strained. And yet,
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you know, the one medical procedure that seems to be fully funded is the medical procedure that would
00:24:49.680
end your life. Medical procedure that could also be used to could also be used to help you become
00:24:56.960
an organ donor, when you otherwise are potentially not able to. If you're if you're someone with a
00:25:02.640
serious illness, it will be unethical for you to donate an organ, right, if your body can't handle
00:25:09.120
the strain. But if you're at first, well, then it's almost unethical, right? So I, you know,
00:25:15.280
I, I, it wasn't that long ago, right? Like in two, what was it in 2016, right, when Bernie Sanders was
00:25:23.040
talking about Canada's healthcare system as something to be emulated in the US, right?
00:25:30.960
I don't think any US are making that argument right now.
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Wow. Okay, well, that's, like, literally, so there's so much I didn't know that now I know,
00:25:40.160
and it's just really wild. And it's probably even more corrupt than I thought it was. So
00:25:44.560
thank you very much, Alexander, I really appreciate you coming on. And yeah, you had a bunch of great
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information. So I think lots of people are gonna learn a lot from this. So thank you. Likewise. Thank
00:25:54.640
you, Leo. Thanks. Okay. Well, if you guys enjoyed this video, and you feel like you've been informed,
00:26:00.800
you can also check out our website, which is westernstandard.news. It's $10 a month and $100 a
00:26:07.680
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00:26:13.360
to say. And thank you for joining us today. And goodbye.