National
Euthanasia skyrocketed in Canada last year and is set to get worse under Trudeau
From LifeSiteNews
Canada now leads the world in having an almost uniquely predatory euthanasia regime, and unless there is a change in government before March, that will only get worse
On September 28, journalist Alexander Raikin made a prediction. Raikin has been reporting on Canada’s euthanasia regime for several years, producing some of the best journalism available on the subject and exposing how “MAiD” – the euphemism used by the government and medical professionals to describe death by lethal injection – is administered. “I’m calling it,” he wrote on X. “The reason that the MAiD annual report still isn’t out is because it’ll show that MaiD caused more than 4% of all deaths in Canada, which will mean that MaiD will be around the 4th leading cause of death in Canada. It’s not linear growth: it’s exponential.”
Raikin was right. The “Fourth annual report on Medical Assistance in Dying in Canada 2022” was released this week, and the numbers are staggering. Over 13,200 Canadians died by assisted suicide in 2022. This is a 31.2% increase from 2021 and brings the total number of deaths by lethal injection in Canada since 2016 to 44,958. All of this is unfolding in the midst of a healthcare crisis in which we are incapable of offering comprehensive psychiatric services, suicide prevention, or palliative beds. As we have seen from the conveyer belt of horror stories being reported around the world, many Canadians are opting for state-sanctioned and state-funded suicide simply because they feel they have no other choice.
In many cases, “MAiD” is the only thing they’re eligible for.
The report is packed with dry data that should cause acute alarm. Every province but Manitoba and Yukon “continue to experience a steady year-over-year growth in 2022.” Males accounted for slightly more of the death count – 51.4% against 48.6%. The average age of the person was 77. While cancer remains the most cited medical condition amongst those requesting assisted suicide, “other conditions,” not specified, account for 14.9% and “neurological conditions” account for 12.6%. Of the total, at least 463 of the people who died by assisted suicide “were individuals whose natural deaths were not reasonably foreseeable,” an increase from 223 in 2021. These numbers, it must be pointed out, are only those officially recorded.
Of those who did not have a “reasonably foreseeable death,” most of them had “neurological conditions” (50%) or “other conditions” (37.1%). According to report, “the most commonly cited sources of suffering by individuals requesting MAID were the loss of ability to engage in meaningful activities” at 86.3%. This, says the report, continues “to mirror very similar trends seen in the previous three years (2019-2021), indicating that the nature of suffering that leads a person to request MAID has remained consistent over the past four years.”
The steady rise in the number of Canadians requesting assisted suicide has also led to a growing number of medical professionals opting to perform it. In 2022, the total number of practitioners dispatching patients by lethal injection was 1,837, up 19.1% from 1,542 in 2021. Of these, 95% were doctors and 5% were nurses. 39.5% of assisted suicides were carried out in private homes. The report also noted that the number of requests is rising sharply, and that few are declined:
There were 16,104 written requests for MAID in 2022. This represents an increase of 26.5% over the number of written requests in 2021. Written requests for MAID have grown by an average of 28.2% per year between 2020 and 2022. In 2022, the majority of written requests (13,102 or 81.4%) resulted in the administration of MAID.
Despite these numbers – which will certainly rise sharply if assisted suicide for mental illness, addiction, and other afflictions are approved next March, which seems likely at this point – Trudeau’s health minister Mark Holland noted that: “As Minister of Health, I am proud to present Health Canada’s Fourth Annual Report on Medical Assistance in Dying in Canada (2022).” It is unclear what, specifically, he is proud of. Canada now leads the world in having an almost uniquely predatory euthanasia regime, and unless there is a change in government before March, that will only get worse.
Business
Canadians should expect even more spending in federal fall economic statement
From the Fraser Institute
By Jake Fuss and Grady Munro
The Trudeau government will soon release its fall economic statement. Though technically intended to be an update on the fiscal plan in this year’s budget, in recent years the fall economic statement has more closely resembled a “mini-budget” that unveils new (and often significant) spending commitments and initiatives.
Let’s look at the data.
The chart below includes projections of annual federal program spending from a series of federal budgets and updates, beginning with the 2022 budget and ending with the latest 2024 budget. Program spending equals total spending minus debt interest costs, and represents discretionary spending by the federal government.
Clearly, there’s a trend that with every consecutive budget and fiscal update the Trudeau government revises spending estimates upwards. Take the last two fiscal years, 2023/24 and 2024/25, for example. Budget 2022 projected annual program spending of $436.5 billion for the 2023/24 fiscal year. Yet the fall economic statement released just months later revised that spending estimate up to $449.8 billion, and later releases showed even higher spending.
The issue is even more stark when examining spending projections for the current fiscal year. Budget 2022 projected annual spending of $441.6 billion in 2024/25. Since then, every subsequent fiscal release has revised that estimate higher and higher, to the point that Budget 2024 estimates program spending of $483.6 billion for this year—representing a $42.0 billion increase from the projections only two years ago.
Meanwhile, as spending estimates are revised upwards, plans to reduce the federal deficit are consistently pushed off into later years.
For example, the 2022 fall economic statement projected a deficit of $25.4 billion for the 2024/25 fiscal year, and declining deficits in the years to come, before reaching an eventual surplus of $4.5 billion in 2027/28. However, subsequent budgets and fiscal updates again revised those estimates. The latest budget projects a deficit of $39.8 billion in 2024/25 that will decline to a $26.8 billion deficit by 2027/28. In other words, though budgets and fiscal updates have consistently projected declining deficits between 2024/25 and 2027/28, each subsequent document has produced larger deficits throughout the fiscal outlook and pushed the timeline for balanced budgets further into the future.
These data illustrate the Trudeau government’s lack of accountability to its own fiscal plans. Though the unpredictable nature of forecasting means the government is unlikely to exactly meet future projections, it’s still reasonable to expect it will roughly follow its own fiscal plans. However, time and time again Canadians have been sold a certain plan, only to have it change dramatically mere months later due to the government’s unwillingness to restrain spending. We shouldn’t expect the upcoming fall economic statement to be any different.
Authors:
Business
Trudeau gov’t threatens to punish tech companies that fail to censor ‘disinformation’
From LifeSiteNews
A report from the House of Commons Heritage Committee claimed that ‘some individuals and groups create disinformation to promote political ideologies including extremist views and conspiracy theories or simply to make money.’
A report from a Canadian federal committee said MPs should enact laws to penalize social media and tech companies that don’t take action to quell so-called “undesirable or questionable” content on the internet.
MPs from the ruling Liberal, New Democratic Party (NDP), and separatists Bloc Québécois party on the House of Commons Heritage Committee summarized their opinions in a report.
“The Government of Canada notes some individuals and groups create disinformation to promote political ideologies including extremist views and conspiracy theories or simply to make money,” reads the report titled Tech Giants’ Intimidation and Subversion Tactics to Evade Regulation in Canada and Globally.
“Disinformation creates ‘doubt and confusion’ and can be particularly harmful when it involves health information,” it continues.
The report notes how such “disinformation” can cause “financial harms as well as political polarization and distrust in key institutions,” adding, “The prevalence of disinformation can be difficult to determine.”
As noted in Blacklock’s Reporter, the report claims that many of Canada’s “major societal harms” have come from “unregulated social media platforms relying on algorithms to amplify content, among them disinformation and conspiracy theories.”
Of note is the committee failed to define what “disinformation” or “conspiracy theories” meant.
Most of the MPs on the committee made the recommendation that Google, Facebook, and other social media platforms, which ironically have at one point or another clamped down on free speech themselves, “put mechanisms in place to detect undesirable or questionable content that may be the product of disinformation or foreign interference and that these platforms be required to promptly identify such content and report it to users.”
“Failure to do so should result in penalties,” the report stated.
As it stands, the federal government under Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has plowed ahead to push laws impacting free speech online.
As reported by LifeSiteNews, Canadian legal group The Democracy Fund (TDF) warned that the Liberal government’s Bill C-63 seeks to further clamp down on online speech and will “weaponize” the nation’s courts to favor the ruling federal party and do nothing but create an atmosphere of “fear.”
Bill C-63 was introduced by Liberal Justice Minister Arif Virani in the House of Commons in February and was immediately blasted by constitutional experts as troublesome.
Jordan Peterson, one of Canada’s most prominent psychologists, recently accused the bill of attempting to create a pathway to allow for “Orwellian Thought Crime” to become the norm in the nation.
Conservative MPs fight back: ‘A government bureaucracy should not regulate content’
Conservative MPs fought back the Heritage Committee’s majority findings and in a Dissenting Report said the committee did not understand what the role of the internet is in society, which is that it should be free from regulation.
“The main report failed to adequately explore the state of censorship in Canada and the role played by tech giants and the current federal government,” the Conservatives wrote in their dissenting report, adding, “Canadians are increasingly being censored by the government and tech giants as to what they can see, hear and say online.”
The Conservative MPs noted that when it comes to the internet, it is “boundless,” and that “Anyone who wants to have a presence on the internet can have one.”
“A government bureaucracy should not regulate which content should be prioritized and which should be demoted,” it noted, adding, “There is space for all.”
LifeSiteNews reported how the Conservative Party has warned that Trudeau’s Bill C-63 is so flawed that it will never be able to be enforced or become known before the next election.
The law calls for the creation of a Digital Safety Commission, a digital safety ombudsperson, and the Digital Safety Office, all tasked with policing internet content.
The bill’s “hate speech” section is accompanied by broad definitions, severe penalties, and dubious tactics, including levying pre-emptive judgments against people if they are feared to be likely to commit an act of “hate” in the future.
Details of the new legislation also show the bill could lead to more people jailed for life for “hate crimes” or fined $50,000 and jailed for posts that the government defines as “hate speech” based on gender, race, or other categories.
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