Without oversight the vulnerable perish
Canada's MAiD plot line is as gruesome as a Hollywood horror story
I want to look away. I don’t want to know. I want to cover my ears. I’d rather watch cat videos on YouTube.
But I can’t.
Too many people, including people in positions of power, are ignoring what appears to be an alarming breach of Canada’s Criminal Code as the MAiD regime continues to expand and root deeply into the medical system.
Ontario Premier Doug Ford is one. He made much news recently as he removed red tape to make beer sales available at gas stations and convenience stores. Perhaps he should have been looking more closely at the euthanasia procedures going on in his back yard.
A new report reveals that Ford’s Chief Coroner has noted 428 possible criminal violations of MAiD laws since Ontario physicians and nurse practitioners started to administer euthanasia in 2016. Yet not a single one has been referred to law enforcement.
What’s going on, Doug? I’ll hold your corner store beer, while you look into it.
Ontario has harsher penalties for aggressive speeding (30-day license revocation), exterminating bats ($10,000 fine), and selling raw milk ($10,000 fine + 6 months in jail for second offenders) than for doctors who stray outside of the expansive MAiD laws to end a human life.
Another powerful person is Minister of Justice and Attorney General of Canada Arif Virani. He chose not to contest Quebec's new law that allows advance requests for medical assistance in dying, which is illegal according to Canada's Criminal Code. Perhaps he could use the time and resources his department is saving by not enforcing the law in Quebec to look into what’s taking place in Ontario.
What’s the deal, Arif?
A third person in power is the very person who knows there’s death in the pot, and just keeps stirring it. There seems to be no case under Ontario Chief Coroner Dr. Dirk Huyer’s oversight that warrants a phone call to police.
The stories are grim. They could be plot lines for Hollywood horror films, but they’re not. They’re real-life stories of Canadian healthcare.
Don’t read further if you want to enjoy the rest of your day:
One account from the Ontario Coroner’s report notes the “manifold failures” of a doctor, who showed up for a home death “completely unprepared” and with the “wrong medications.” Family members watched helplessly as the cocktail of drugs administered to their loved one did not do the promised job. The doctor left for two hours to source more meds as the dying loved one “suffered tremendously.”
In another case, the 90-day waiting period between approval of MAiD and the procedure was hastened “based on the [patient’s] spouse’s preference of timing.”
Then there’s the family member left behind with questions, but no more loved one. The grief-stricken man complained to the College of Physicians and Surgeons that his mother was improperly assessed, didn’t understand her condition, and wasn’t in pain in the four weeks between approval and procedure.
Rather than turning the above cases or any of the other 425 reported violations over to law enforcement, Ontario’s Coroner described these horrific cases as opportunities for “learning.” While the Justice Minister familiarizes himself with the Criminal Code, perhaps the Coroner should review his office’s code.
According to the code of ethics, all coroners in Ontario shall “exercise their duties and responsibilities without … partiality towards any person, group or institution.” Under Huyer’s oversight, it seems that partiality is shown, always, to the euthanasia regime and its enforcers.
Never to the dead or those left behind.
, who broke the story and reported these inconvenient medical truths, concludes in The New Atlantis that instead of “protecting vulnerable people from abuse and error,” the overseers of euthanasia are instead “protecting euthanasia providers from their abuse and error coming to light.”As Canadians continue to wait for the 2023 report on assisted dying to be released, a report that is long overdue, we can only guess at how many thousands more people have died at the hand of their doctors. But we can be sure that some euthanasia providers have violated the Criminal Code as they ended more Canadian lives.
Without vision, according to the proverb, the people perish. Without oversight, the vulnerable do too.
New feature:
This week I’m launching a new feature called My Fake Podcast on Things I Said Out Loud (the audio companion to TIWD). On the podcast, artificial radio personalities discuss real content I wrote to bring the ideas to life in a new way.
I’m testing Google’s frighteningly amazing NoteLM technology. This week, I got the AI to talk about some of the recent content I wrote that affirms life, including:
Tremendously heartbreaking. Unfathomably evil. Inexplicably the Canada we now call home. But not for long I pray.