Satire site The Babylon Bee recently ran the headline, ‘Canadian Healthcare System Introduces Punch Card Where On Your 10th Visit You Get Free Suicide.’ Sadly, the joke isn’t too far off from reality.
Earlier this year, I posted a meme on Facebook that brutally skewered Canada’s euthanasia regime. It showed an American doctor telling a patient his stitches would cost $58,000; a British doctor that the waitlist for stitches was 38 months; and a Canadian doctor solicitously inquiring: “Have you considered killing yourself?” (Another variation of the same meme has the doctor bluntly stating: “Kill yourself”—that’s because in Canada, we have the waitlistand the suicide.)
Facebook pulled the image and restricted my account. It violated their rules on the promotion of suicide. The Canadian Association of MAiD Assessors and Providers (CAMAP), however, operates freely on Facebook despite the fact that facilitating suicide is their entire job.
I’ve noted before in this space that Canada’s euthanasia regime has turned us into an international cautionary tale—a country where we can, as it turns out, have the worst of all worlds. We can have a woke government that talks constantly about helping the poor, but implements euthanasia policies that victimize them (leading to headlines in the international press such as: “Why is Canada euthanizing the poor?”) The steady conveyer belt of horror stories as disabled, sick, and desperate Canadians seek lethal injections—often the only “treatment” they’re eligible for in our broken system—makes the old Mitchell and Webb sketch seem plausible:
Consider that in the midst of all of this, the Trudeau government is—for the moment—still hellbent on expanding assisted suicide to the mentally ill in March, despite desperate calls to halt these plans from the psychiatric community, Canadian medical schools, suicide prevention experts, the disability community, and virtually everyone but the suicide enthusiasts at Dying with Dignity. It actually boggles the mind—the prime minister’s own mother has written several memoirs describing her own struggled with mental illness which would, come March, make her eligible to die under the regime her son has introduced.
As Canada’s MAID (Medical Assistance In Dying) system continues to alleviate the pain of patients and the financial strain on the nation’s healthcare system, a recent innovation is expected to further improve results: Parliament just announced a punch card that allows patients to receive a free suicide after 10 doctor visits.
‘From a small-scale maple syrup overdose to a full-blown moose attack, you receive a punch on your card every time you are admitted for an injury or sickness.’ The Canadian Healthcare website published a blog this week outlining the new program.
‘Filling out your punch card is mandatory, for data tracking purposes. No one sick person can be allowed to drain more than their share of the taxpayer’s dollars!’
Trudeau praised the new initiative, positioning it as a way to better engage citizens and prevent any one citizen from becoming a burden on the system. ‘Canadians are team players,’ said Trudeau. ‘It’s important for every citizen to make sure he’s not wasting taxpayer money to sustain a life that’s not worth living. And now with this punch card, they know that with each hospital visit they’re one step closer to the end!’
For anyone offended by this, I would remind them that Canadians right across the country have been pro-actively offered assisted suicide by doctors—including military veterans suffering from PTSD. Cancer patients have been told that treatment that might save their lives is not available—but assisted suicide is. A disabled man in a hospital in London recorded an ethicist telling him that he should consider assisted suicide because his care was costing the system so much money. One Canadian doctor told me that his colleagues feel obligated to present “MAiD” as an option—and that increasingly, sick and vulnerable Canadians will feel obligated to take it.
More from The Bee:
Critics have contended that the new approach preys on disabled and impoverished Canadians who may see assisted suicide as their only option, but the criticism has already been quieted since Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau froze the bank accounts of anyone who spoke out against his regime’s policies in the comments section of the healthcare website’s blog, or on Twitter, or elsewhere. At publishing time, the burden on Canada’s healthcare system was further alleviated when Parliament announced that the policy would retroactively apply to people who had already been admitted for 10 prior hospital visits.
That sort of thing provokes what they call a “painful chuckle.” The truth is that, as Ross Douthat noted in the New York Times, Canada has already entered a truly dystopian period—when over 4% of recorded deaths are Canadians being lethally injected by doctors, we’re all the way down the slope and there’s a huge pile of corpses at the bottom. I really wish that article was more satirical than it is.
Jonathon Van Maren is a public speaker, writer, and pro-life activist. His commentary has been translated into more than eight languages and published widely online as well as print newspapers such as the Jewish Independent, the National Post, the Hamilton Spectator and others. He has received an award for combating anti-Semitism in print from the Jewish organization B’nai Brith. His commentary has been featured on CTV Primetime, Global News, EWTN, and the CBC as well as dozens of radio stations and news outlets in Canada and the United States.
He speaks on a wide variety of cultural topics across North America at universities, high schools, churches, and other functions. Some of these topics include abortion, pornography, the Sexual Revolution, and euthanasia. Jonathon holds a Bachelor of Arts Degree in history from Simon Fraser University, and is the communications director for the Canadian Centre for Bio-Ethical Reform.
Jonathon’s first book, The Culture War, was released in 2016.
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Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese announced Thursday that he was proposing legislation banning social media for children under the age of 16.
Under the legislation, social media platforms will be required to prevent access to minors under 16 without exceptions for parental consent, Albanese announced at a press conference Thursday. The prime minister cited social media’s harm to children as the reasoning behind the proposal.
“Social media is doing harm to our kids, and I’m calling time on it,” Albanese said at the press conference. “This is world-leading legislation. We want to make sure that it is got right.”
“It’s something that is of enormous concern, and we know the social harm that can be caused and we know the consequences here,” Albanese continued.
Albanese clarified that the burden of protecting minors from social media will fall to the platforms, not parents, and that users will not be penalized for breaking this law. The nation will reconsider the legal definition of age-appropriate content so that minors will still have access to educational resources online.
The proposal is set to be reviewed by the cabinet on Friday and will go into effect 12 months after its passage, Albanese said.
“We know that social media offers many benefits to Australians … but we also know that it brings many harms,” Michelle Rowland, Australia’s Communications Minister, said at the conference. “I want to say to parents, just as the Prime Minister did, when it comes to protecting children from the harms caused by content or addictive behaviors as a result of social media, we are on your side. The fact is that social media has a social responsibility, but the platforms are falling short.”
Several U.S. states already enforce restrictions on social media for minors but allow for exceptions for parental consent, such as California and Florida. U.S. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy called for policymakers to crack down on social media in May 2023, warning of a “profound risk of harm” for minors.
President-elect Donald Trump dismissed concerns Thursday about the costs associated with his proposed mass deportation plan.
During a phone interview with NBC News, Trump stated that “there’s no price tag” to his promised deportation plan. He said that he’d initiate an unprecedented immigration crackdown from his first day in office, aiming to deport those in the U.S. illegally, particularly individuals with criminal records.
“It’s not a question of a price tag. It’s not — really, we have no choice. When people have killed and murdered, when drug lords have destroyed countries, and now they’re going to go back to those countries because they’re not staying here. There is no price tag,” Trump said, according to NBC News.
TRUMP: “We are going to have the largest deportation effort in the history of our country, we are bringing everybody back to where they came from. We have no choice.” pic.twitter.com/vsd11XVQAh
Trump says he’ll depend heavily on local law enforcement to deport people, although coordination with federal agencies will be essential, the outlet reported. During the same interview, Trump also expressed a welcoming stance toward legal immigration and discussed the need for a robust and secure border. He maintained that the country should remain open to newcomers who respect its laws.
“We obviously have to make the border strong and powerful and, and we have to — at the same time, we want people to come into our country,” Trump said. “And you know, I’m not somebody that says, ‘No, you can’t come in.’ We want people to come in,” Trump said, according to NBC News.
Despite efforts by Democrats to sway Latino voters, his support among Latino men has surged, according to a CNN exit poll. Trump led Vice President Kamala Harris by 12 points among Latino men, however Harris won over Latino women by 22 points.
From the Daily Caller News Foundation 
