The terms permissive or progressive don’t do justice to the expansion of assisted suicide in Canada that’s happened practically overnight. Outrageous and unacceptable are a bitter fit.
In recent months, Canadians have been shocked by news stories about people who have considered, been offered, or been approved for what we call “medical assistance in dying” (MAiD) for reasons that take us way beyond where we thought we were headed.
OTTAWA — Revelations that some Canadian veterans have been offered medically assisted deaths while seeking help from the federal government are adding to worries about Ottawa’s plans to expand such procedures to include mental-health injuries and illnesses.
Veterans’ organizations are instead calling on Ottawa to increase access to mental-health services for former service members, which includes addressing the long wait times that many are forced to endure when applying for assistance.
OTTAWA — Conservatives are calling on the federal government to delay the expansion of medical assistance in dying to people suffering from mental illnesses next March.
In a statement Friday, MPs Michael Cooper, Stephen Ellis and Dominique Vien sided with the position taken by the Association of Chairs of Psychiatry in Canada, which includes heads of psychiatry departments of Canada’s 17 medical schools, publicly on Thursday.
If you have a mental health crisis in this country, count yourself as extremely lucky if you get help quickly. Canadians seeking treatment for mental illness or distress can be forced to wait weeks, months or years depending on their needs, location and financial status.
Justice Minister David Lametti under fire for ‘unbelievable’ comparisons between euthanasia and suicide
Did Justice Minister David Lametti say the quiet part out loud?
In a recent interview for the Star’s “It’s Political” podcast, Lametti conflated medical assistance in dying (MAID) and suicide. After I expressed reservations about the expansion of MAID in March to people with mental illness without adequate social and medical supports, Lametti told me to “remember that suicide generally is available to people. This is a group within the population who, for physical reasons and possibly mental reasons, can’t make that choice themselves to do it themselves. And ultimately, this provides a more humane way for them to make a decision they otherwise could have made if they were able in some other way.”
Socialism always ends in mass murder. It’s a feature not a bug.
After Balenciaga, more publicity campaigns are taking a disturbing turn
Fashion has been smashing taboos since Coco Chanel first marketed trousers to women after World War I. But today there are very few norms left to assault in pursuit of publicity-generating controversy. So perhaps we shouldn’t be surprised to find the rag trade venturing into truly taboo territory: paedophilia and now suicide — albeit with a fig-leaf of liberal proceduralism, in its guise as medically-assisted voluntary euthanasia.
Two more instances of a Veterans Affairs Canada employee discussing medical assistance in dying with a veteran have been discovered during an ongoing investigation into the department, the minister responsible told lawmakers Thursday.
Veterans Affairs Minister Lawrence MacAulay told the House of Commons standing committee on veterans affairs this brings the total number of cases involving a single VAC service agent to four, and that the RCMP has been contacted.
Societies can prevent suicide by substituting homicide. In Canada, doctors in the spring of ‘23 will be authorized to encourage patients who are depressed, mentally ill, or just difficult or expensive to treat to commit suicide. To be fair, two doctors must sign off on the final decision, and there will be a 90-day waiting period before the execution can be carried out. If doctors are squeamish about it, the law is going to permit nurse practitioners to do the deed (probably with a hefty bonus for each ‘patient’ so treated).
This new policy is materially different from the assisted suicide that is already legal in Canada. That sees doctors supplying the drugs for ending life and leaves it to the individuals to choose the time and place to self-administer.
A second Canadian Forces member has come forward with allegations that a Veterans Affairs Canada caseworker offered him medical assistance in dying after he asked for support for post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).
The president of the Quebec College of Physicians wants to explore the prospect of euthanizing suffering babies and believes it’s nobody’s business but doctors’.
To be fair, Dr. Mauril Gaudreault would let parents have a say as well, so he’s not being totally arrogant.
Gaudreault’s rather obscene suggestion illustrates just how far down the slippery slope we have plunged when it comes to mercy killing, euthanasia, Medical Assistance in Dying (MAID) , call it what you will.
Everything new is Nazi again!
Parliament is now calmly discussing whether disabled children could be euthanised by doctors. In other words, infanticide
The representative of the medical regulator spoke in a straightforward, unemotional voice, as though his statements were self-evidently true. Sick children between the ages of 14 and 17, he told the parliamentary committee, should be allowed to choose to commit suicide with medical assistance.
Parents of babies who are born with severe disabilities should be allowed to kill them. Elderly people for whom “life no longer makes any sense” should also be able to end theirs. And so should the mentally ill, and so on and on. Members of the committee ask some follow-up questions, but no one pushes back.
Junior’s Canada is so progressive you can’t tell us apart from the Nazis.
The date whispers in Julie Leblanc’s mind when she is feeling most hopeless. It tugs at her thoughts when, for days, she forgets to eat, or doesn’t shower. She thinks about it more than she knows she should.
On March 17, assisted dying will become legal for Canadians with a mental disorder as their sole condition, and Ms. Leblanc can apply.
She has been struggling with mental illness since she was 8 years old. At 13, she was prescribed her first trial of anti-depressants; now at 31, she has tried too many medications to count, and spent much of her life either in therapy or waiting on a list to receive it. Bounced between doctors, she has been given multiple diagnoses – depression, anxiety, post-traumatic stress disorder, borderline personality disorder.
Back in 2015, the Supreme Court justices who unanimously struck down the Criminal Code provision against medical assistance in dying (MAID) couldn’t foresee how Canada’s assisted dying program might evolve to the point it is today. I don’t mean that figuratively – in their written decision, they implied that they simply couldn’t see it happening.
People fought and died in WW II to extinguish the Mengeles of the world.
When society denies the objective value of human life, no one is safe
