From LifeSiteNews

By Anthony Murdoch

Privacy Commissioner Philippe Dufresne that there was no consultation on Bill C-8, which is touted by Liberals as a way to stop ‘unprecedented cyber-threats.’

Canada’s Privacy Commissioner admitted that he was never consulted on a recent bill introduced by the Liberal government of Prime Minister Mark Carney that became law and would grant officials the power to ban anyone deemed a dissident from accessing the internet.

Privacy Commissioner Philippe Dufresne said last week that in regard to Bill C-8, titled “An Act respecting cyber security, amending the Telecommunications Act and making consequential amendments to other Acts,” that there was no consultation.

“We are not consulted on specific pieces of legislation before they are tabled,” he told the House of Commons ethics committee, adding, “I don’t want privacy to be an obstacle to transparency.”

Bill C-8, which is now in its second reading in the House of Commons, was introduced in June by Minister of Public Safety Gary Anandasangaree and has a provision in which the federal government could stop “any specified person” from accessing the internet.

All that would be needed is the OK from Minister of Industry Mélanie Joly for an individual to be denied internet service.

The federal government under Carney claims that the bill is a way to stop “unprecedented cyber-threats.”

The bill, as written, claims that the government would need the power to cut someone off from the internet, as it could be “necessary to do so to secure the Canadian telecommunications system against any threat, including that of interference, manipulation, disruption, or degradation.”

While questioning Dufresne, Conservative MP Michael Barrett raised concerns that no warrant would be needed for agents to go after those officials who want to be banned from the internet or phone service.

“Without meaningful limits, bills like C-8 can hand the government secret, warrantless powers over Canadians’ communications,” he told the committee, adding the bill, as written is a “serious setback for privacy,” as well as a “setback for democracy.”

Barrett asked if the goal of the bill is for Parliament to be granted “sweeping powers of surveillance to the government without a formal review?

Dufresne said, “It’s not a legal obligation under the Privacy Act.”

Experts have warned that Bill C-8 is flawed and must be “fixed.”

The Canadian Civil Liberties Association (CCLA) blasted the bill as troublesome, saying it needs to “fix” the “dangerous flaws” in the bill before it becomes law.

“Experts and civil society have warned that the legislation would confer ministerial powers that could be used to deliberately or inadvertently compromise the security of encryption standards within telecommunications networks that people, governments, and businesses across Canada rely upon, every day,” the CCLA wrote in a recent press release.

Canada’s own intelligence commissioner has warned that the bill, if passed as is, would potentially not be constitutionally justified, as it would allow for warrantless seizure of a person’s sensitive information.

Since taking power in 2015, the Liberal government has brought forth many new bills that, in effect, censor internet content as well as go after people’s ability to speak their minds.

Recently, Canadian Conservative Party MP Leslyn Lewis blasted another new Liberal “hate crime” bill, calling it a “dangerous” piece of legislation that she says will open the door for authorities to possibly prosecute Canadians’ speech deemed “hateful.”

She also criticized it for being silent regarding rising “Christian hate.”

Fr0m LifeSiteNews

By Calvin Freiburger

The lawsuit says Colorado’s assisted suicide law violates federal protections by allowing physicians to prescribe lethal drugs to some disabled patients under circumstances where others would be directed to mental health care

Doctors in Colorado are pushing assisted suicide on hundreds of patients solely because they suffer from eating disorders, according to a patients’ advocate sharing the harrowing story of one such case.

Writing in the Denver Post, Patient Rights Action Fund and Institute for Patient Rights executive director Matt Vallière tells the story of his friend Jane Allen, who battled anorexia “most of her life,” who in 2018 was diagnosed with “terminal anorexia,” a relatively recent diagnosis which has been criticized as overly broad and dangerous.

Her eating disorder doctor, Jane wrote, “would ‘make an exception’ for me and ‘allow’ me to die, if that was my choice. It didn’t feel like my choice – I felt coerced and spent an incredibly agonizing months in an assisted living facility.” She eventually received the suicide drugs, but was saved by her father winning a guardianship order and having the drugs destroyed.

“I ate just enough to not die right away. And then I ate more,” Jane wrote. “I weaned off the morphine and all the other hospice drugs that kept me in such a fog. I was getting better, and then I was told that I was too much of a liability and dropped from the clinic. I moved from Colorado to Oregon. I have a job that I love, a new puppy, and a great group of friends. I’m able to fuel my body to hike and do the things I love. I’m repairing my relationship with my family, and I have a great therapist who is helping me process all of this. Things obviously aren’t perfect, and I still have hard days. But I also have balance, and flexibility, and a life that is so much more than I was told would ever be possible for me.”

Jane ultimately passed away due to complications from her years of anorexia, which Vallière wonders could have been prevented by not detouring her down the terminal anorexia route. Regardless, her story details how easily similar cases can end in suicide for people without people willing to fight to give them hope. Live Action notes that last year, Colorado saw a record number of people, 510, prescribed suicide drugs solely for dietary disorders.

“What we do know is that these laws are not so rosy as the propaganda would have you believe,” Vallière writes, adding “there has been and will be more collateral damage in people like Jane or Coloradan Mary Gossman, who was told by a nationally renowned Denver eating disorder treatment facility, ‘there’s nothing we can do for you,’ which qualified her for lethal drugs under the law. She’s in a better place now and has joined as a plaintiff in a lawsuit to overturn the law. So, I ask: how many collateral deaths are acceptable to you?”

That lawsuit says that Colorado’s so-called “medical aid-in-dying” or assisted suicide law violates federal protections by allowing physicians to prescribe lethal drugs to some disabled patients under circumstances where others would be directed to mental health care, by “assum[ing] that a request for assisted suicide is not an indication of a mental disorder, when other Colorado laws make precisely the opposite assumption for virtually everyone else.”

Twelve U.S. states plus the District of Columbia allow assisted suicide. In April, however, a bill to legalize euthanasia failed in Maryland.

As Vallière has previously argued elsewhere, current euthanasia programs in the United States constitute discrimination against patients with life-threatening conditions in violation of the Americans with Disabilities Act, as when a state will “will pay for every instance of assisted suicide” but not palliative care, “I don’t call that autonomy, I call that eugenics.”

Live Action’s Bridget Sielicki further notes that “because a paralytic is involved, a person can look peaceful, while they actually drown to death in their own bodily secretions. Experimental assisted suicide drugs have led to the ‘burning of patients’ mouths and throats, causing some to scream in pain.’ Furthermore, a study in the medical journal Anaesthesia found that a third of patients took up to 30 hours to die after ingesting assisted suicide drugs, while four percent took seven days to die.”

Support is available to talk to those struggling with thoughts of ending their lives. The Suicide & Crisis Lifeline can be reached by calling or texting 988.