Death Becomes You: How Canada Became Euthanasia Central

Liberalism used to mean live-and-let-live. If your neighbour painted his house day-glo green, liberals shrugged and said, “so be it”. Now? You must not only heap fulsome public praise on his paint preference but you must paint your own house the same glaring colour, too. While apologizing for your abject failure in not recognizing his lived paint experience.

The runaway freight train that is liberalism the past decade has come to affect virtually every part of life. Now the moveable goal posts have come to impact death, too. As usual, the best intentions of cozy liberals have become the ugly bureaucratic beast of effective altruism.

The issue de jour of assisted suicide— tactfully known in Canada as medical assistance in dying (MAID)— leapt into the Canadian public consciousness with the ALS death of Toronto Maple Leaf legend Borje Salming. As we wrote here , the spectacle of the legendary Swede taking a last public lap with his former teammates and fans in Toronto last month was heart-rending.

Salming, who was diagnosed in April, died just after returning to Sweden. Former teammate Mark Kirton, who also suffers from ALS, a progressive nervous system disease which has no known cure, spoke for all terminal patients in weighing their options. “He died a good death,” Kirton said. “What I mean by that is, his family was around him. He didn’t allow the ALS monster to tear him apart.

“Let me elaborate on that. He knew how much a burden he would be to his family if it kept going, going, going. He knew what was going on in that respect. He was a smart player, even a smarter man.”

Naturally the swift end for Salming so soon after returning from Toronto raised questions. Did Salming use assisted suicide? It is not yet legal in Sweden, and no one has confirmed that he did. But to those who think MAID should be available to terminal patients Salming’s case perfectly fits the template of compassion.

Had Salming been Canadian, he could have availed himself of MAID in Canada. Available to physically challenged or terminal patients since 2016, it has now will be expanded in March 2023 to include those living with mental-health conditions. The law says “a physician or nurse practitioner can directly administer a substance that causes the death of the person who has requested it, or A physician or nurse practitioner can give or prescribe to a patient a substance that they can self-administer to cause their own death.” (In the United States, physician-assisted suicide is legal in nine states and D.C.)

Many Canadians want the option to decide when enough is enough— and are choosing death. In 2021 over 10,000 ended their lives this way, just over 3 percent of all deaths in Canada. But as is typical of this Liberal government and its virtue-seeking cadres, the original compassionate sentiment and its rollout have produced something else used by malign actors.

Assisted death has now seemingly gone from last resort to earth-friendly lessening of the population promoted by society’s top names. And as an alternative to psychiatric treatment. Medical providers of MAID are being told that bringing up the topic to vulnerable patients is now a professional obligation.

According to reports, patients suffering from depression and other psychiatric conditions are being offered MAID as an alternative to treatment. One man said he wanted MAID to escape his terrible financial straits. The most dramatic suggestion has come from desperate Canadian veterans who claim they are being offered MAID in lieu of further treatment.

The federal government says it has no evidence of this being offered, but veterans insist it was verbally offered. Retired corporal and Canadian Paralympian Christine Gauthier told the House of Commons’ veterans affairs committee in November that she was offered an assisted death during her five-year fight for a wheelchair ramp in her home.

Other veterans had similar stories of their psychiatric treatment being no treatment at all. “Mental-health injuries can be terminal only if they’re untreated, unsupported and under-resourced,” said Wounded Warriors executive director Scott Maxwell, whose organization runs mental-health support programs for veterans and first responders.

According to Maria Cheng of The Associated Press, “the Canadian system shows exactly the corrosive features that critics of assisted suicide anticipated, from health care workers allegedly suggesting euthanasia to their patients to sick people seeking a quietus for reasons linked to financial stress”. But defenders of those too ill or depressed to defend themselves are up against stiff competition in the battle for Canadian hearts and minds.

The fashion retailer Simons produced a lavish PSA in October about 37-year-old Jennyfer Hatch, who was approved for MAID amid suffering associated with Ehlers Danlos syndrome. Simons execs said their piece was to “build the communities that we want to live in tomorrow, and leave to our children.” NYT columnist Ross Douthat observed: “For those communities and children, the video’s message is clear: They should believe in the holiness of euthanasia.”

As if gauzy tributes to MAID were not enough, mainstream Canadian media found a silver lining. “Medically assisted deaths prove a growing boon to organ donation in Ontario,” chirped the Ottawa Citizen. “Ontarians who opt for medically assisted deaths (MAiD) are increasingly saving or improving other people’s lives by also including organ and tissue donation as part of their final wishes.” Well gosh, ain’t that swell!

Unspoken in this move to euthanasia is the acknowledged desire on the part of many environmentalists and radicals to reduce the world population. Planned Parenthood has long embraced euthanasia as a means of lowering the population— especially those with whom they disapprove politically or culturally. Noted population catastrophist Paul Ehrlich has predicted everything from nuclear disaster to plague unless we get on with the business of helping people die— especially people not down with climate catechism.

Not surprisingly Canada is now being mocked as the assisted-suicide hub of the world. Annette Prestia: “‘Kill yourself’ is either an insult that will get you kicked off Twitter or health advice from the Canadian government” Tweeted Adam Zivo: “The toilet in my boyfriend’s apartment stopped working tonight. I let him know that, if the problem persists, we can just fly to Canada and apply for MAID”.

So if nothing else, Canada has that going for us. We The Dead North coming to a screen near you.

[Disclosure: At NPB we have seen our brother-in-law die of ALS upper bulbar palsy and currently have a close friend battling the disease.]

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Bruce Dowbiggin @dowbboy is the editor of Not The Public Broadcaster A two-time winner of the Gemini Award as Canada’s top television sports broadcaster, he’s a regular contributor to Sirius XM Canada Talks Ch. 167. Inexact Science: The Six Most Compelling Draft Years In NHL History, his new book with his son Evan, was voted the seventh-best professional hockey book of all time by bookauthority.org . His 2004 book Money Players was voted sixth best on the same list, and is available via http://brucedowbigginbooks.ca/book-personalaccount.aspx

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BRUCE DOWBIGGIN Award-winning Author and Broadcaster Bruce Dowbiggin's career is unmatched in Canada for its diversity and breadth of experience . He is currently the editor and publisher of Not The Public Broadcaster website and is also a contributor to SiriusXM Canada Talks. His new book Cap In Hand was released in the fall of 2018. Bruce's career has included successful stints in television, radio and print. A two-time winner of the Gemini Award as Canada's top television sports broadcaster for his work with CBC-TV, Mr. Dowbiggin is also the best-selling author of "Money Players" (finalist for the 2004 National Business Book Award) and two new books-- Ice Storm: The Rise and Fall of the Greatest Vancouver Canucks Team Ever for Greystone Press and Grant Fuhr: Portrait of a Champion for Random House. His ground-breaking investigations into the life and times of Alan Eagleson led to his selection as the winner of the Gemini for Canada's top sportscaster in 1993 and again in 1996. This work earned him the reputation as one of Canada's top investigative journalists in any field. He was a featured columnist for the Calgary Herald (1998-2009) and the Globe & Mail (2009-2013) where his incisive style and wit on sports media and business won him many readers.

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Hockey Tolerance Is A Two-Way Street, Not A One-Way Road

Bruce Dowbiggin / 6 days ago

Pop Quiz: You Know You’re A Woke Punchline When…

Bruce Dowbiggin / 1 week ago

NHL: Everyone Wears The Ribbon Part Deux

Bruce Dowbiggin

Hockey Tolerance Is A Two-Way Street, Not A One-Way Road

Published on March 27, 2023

Bruce Dowbiggin

The problem with liberal tolerance in Canada is that it’s not particularly liberal and it’s certainly not tolerant. For instance, the “everyone must wear an LGBTQ-2 jersey” controversy we highlighted last week. The reverberations from goalie James Reimer declining to wear a San Jose Sharks rainbow jersey have continued all week.

It seems to have escaped many people’s tolerance that refusing to march in a parade does not mean you hate the people in the parade. It is to say that you have a different opinion. One your employer can’t compel you to abandon. An opinion guaranteed to you by generations of free speech and religious freedom.

It is why we have halal and kosher foods. Live and let live. But the hysteria is not stopping with Reimer. The radical blood hounds have tracked down new targets to mount on their gibbet of 100 percent conformity to Woke causes.

The latest NHLers caught up in this fundamental failure to communicate are the Staal brothers in Florida who followed Reimer’s path to say that they haven’t and won’t wear symbols with which they disagree. Immediately the SJW sports media attacked them. When they said they wouldn’t Pride jerseys it was shown by the gotchas ‘ that they had worn subtle LGBTQ jerseys in the past. As if this makes them hypocrites.

My friend Mark Hebscher asked if the NHL should suspend them. Really? What would Mark say if Edmonton’s Zach Hyman, a Jew, declined to wear Muslim symbols on an Islamic Pride night? Would Mark demand Hyman be suspended?

What would he say if secular players in the league declined to wear the cross on their jersey for a Christian appreciation night? Should they be punished as haters? What if a pro sports team has a Mormon appreciation night. Does refusing to wear an LDS badge make people haters?

Of course these examples are moot. There are no progressive DEI laurels for creating political trip wires over Muslims or secularists to advance Woke influence. The only targets that matter here are conservative whites. Sports teams these days would only entertain the most provocative causes to create “a crisis that shouldn’t go to waste” (in the words of Saul Alinsky in his Rules for Radicals).

So Brian Burke was imported by Rogers Hockey Night in Canada on Saturday to further whip the herd into 100-percent compliance on Pride jerseys— and to push Rogers corporate bonafides as a Woke organization. Burke has become a fervent LGBTQ-2 spokesman since his son Brendan came out (and was tragically killed in a car crash). Good on him as a parent.

But he’s also a high-profile NHL figure, who was, in a major way, responsible for perpetuating the “boys-only” culture in the sport when he handled NHL discipline. He was his usual truculent self on HNIC as he conflated free speech with prejudice. He saw no room for tolerance on anything but the Pride agenda, insisting against all evidence that wearing the Pride jersey isn’t a political statement. “I was born and raised a Catholic, I don’t see any conflict between my religious beliefs and my ability to say to the LGBTQ+ community ‘you’re welcome here.”

That’s not what he’s saying, but play along. Host Ron Maclean— with whom we have had our disagreements in the past— did his job, gamely asking why wasn’t there a middle ground between hating and enforced 100 percent compliance to the cause? Burke shooed him away.

Naturally, radical social-media trolls pounced, asking for Maclean’s scalp for doing his job. There can be no exceptions! Reason is not a long suit for these Maoist shills. They want to be in Pol Pot’s Cambodia while their fellow citizens would prefer to remain in what used to be Canada before Justin Trudeau turned it into a postmodern state that stands for everything— and nothing.

The point that needs debate on HNIC is whether a few rich hockey players, who make so much money that they don’t have to give a flip, are going to make the league more inclusive by wearing a Pride jersey for one night. Likely not.

As we’ve contended over decades, the key to acceptance of gays in hockey will be the coming-out of a prominent NHL star(s). They are out there. It wasn’t high rhetoric from Brooklyn Dodgers GM Branch Rickey that changed the colour line in baseball. It was Jackie Robinson’s forbearance. It wasn’t slogans that slowly changed the skin colour of golf. It was Tiger Woods’ utter dominance.

It was also the hyper-macho world that Brian Burke nurtured through the years before his son came out — not colourful jerseys— that has repressed gay participation in the NHL. The weeding-out of gay youth in the development process comes from the grass roots. (To his credit a penitent Burke now owns some of this.)

While it is commendable that Burke now supports his son’s memory, flailing Christians for refusing to wear Pride jerseys is not the way to achieve understanding. Worshipping symbols is a divisive, not a unifying action that plays into the hands of forces Burke clearly does not acknowledge or understand. Radicals who use terms like white settler and cis-gender-entitlement to baffle the vulnerable. And who will discard him when he’s no longer of use to them.

Those would be the people who applaud the current PM and his caucus for having equal numbers of women in their ranks— the same PM who fired his prominent female/ indigenous justice minister for insubordination when the RCMP dug too deep. And the same “feminist” women MPs who stood by silently as Trudeau publicly destroyed one of their own to save himself from RCMP scrutiny. Those are the cowards who back the destruction of free speech.

Churchill was prescient about appeasing today’s virtue warriors when he long ago said that appeasers “are like people who feed the crocodile in hopes that the crocodile eats them last.” Chomp.Chomp. Their day is coming.

Bruce Dowbiggin @dowbboy is the editor of Not The Public Broadcaster A two-time winner of the Gemini Award as Canada’s top television sports broadcaster, he’s a regular contributor to Sirius XM Canada Talks Ch. 167. Inexact Science: The Six Most Compelling Draft Years In NHL History, his new book with his son Evan, was voted the seventh-best professional hockey book of all time by bookauthority.org . His 2004 book Money Players was voted sixth best on the same list, and is available via http://brucedowbigginbooks.ca/book-personalaccount.aspx

Bruce Dowbiggin

Pop Quiz: You Know You’re A Woke Punchline When…

Published on March 23, 2023

Bruce Dowbiggin

“Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.” They can be powerful words to live by. Live-and-let-live has underpinned much of the Judeo/Christian tradition. It also informs many of the world’s other religions. For secular people the sentiment works just as well.

If you want to be loved and respected then you must extend love and respect in equal measures to those of whom you’re not all that fond. It is both a brake on hubris and an inspiration to our “better angels”. While that balance has been observed more in the breach than in the commission at times, live-and-let-live nonetheless still provides a path to mutual co-existence.

There was a time when that balance guided society. Or, as they like to say, the Good Old Days. Now, the needle monitoring live-and-let-live swings like a Hillary Clinton polygraph. If you’re with safe-space generation, no micro aggression is too small, no affront to LGBTQ-2 too slight to put off national calamity, no enemy too small to squash.

Woke causes replace empathy in the daily conversation. Why? Journalist Michael Shellenberger says apocalyptic behaviour “provides psychological comfort to secular Western people who have gradually abandoned traditional religions. For over a century, sociologists and psychologists have documented rising rates of depression and anxiety… Is it a coincidence that the people who said Western civilization was unsustainable are making it so?”

Not everyone has succumbed. How can you tell? In the spirit of comedian Jeff Foxworthy’s “You might be as redneck if…” here is your guide to discovering if you have become a Woke punchline.

If you’ve forgiven Japan and Germany for the atrocities they inflicted on the world in the 1940s but you can’t get past Sir John A. Macdonald putting the railway through the land of the Sioux, Blackfoot and Lakota… you might be a Woke punchline.

If you are concerned about world over-population but you’re nagging your kids about when they will make you grandparents… you might be a Woke punchline.

If you’re so sensitive about killing animals for food that you go extreme vegan but then attend a Pro-Choice rally in a T-shirt bragging about how many abortions you’ve had…you might be a Woke punchline.

If you’re in favour of Trudeau’s aggressive immigration policy but then your kids say they can’t afford to buy a home in a large Canadian centre… you might be a Woke punchline.

If you try to convince friends at a dinner party that Trudeau’s Carbon Tax really does fight global warming but your monthly hydro bill triples… you might be a Woke punchline.

If you think Trudeau family friends are the best people to investigate him ignoring CSIS warnings about China but you think Pierre Polievre is a little too cozy with the international forces of Qanon… you might be a Woke punchline.

If you believe Doug Ford is trying to dismantle free healthcare but then act indignant with the boys at beer-league hockey that you can’t get your knee fixed for over two years… you might be a Woke punchline.

If you think Stephen Colbert is still funny, but think that Bill Maher is now sounding like a January 6 insurrectionist… you might be a Woke punchline.

If you think banning Muslim and Sikh symbols is racist but Quebec doing the same is their cultural right… you might be a Woke punchline.

If you think the B.C. government will cure drug addiction by giving addicts a cozy place to shoot up but you tell people at work that you can’t go downtown anymore for all the junkies blocking the Starbucks entrance… you might be a Woke punchline.

If you firmly believe the prime minister is trying to keep a lid on inflation but you protest that Galen Weston is gouging you on food prices… you might be a Woke punchline.

If you donate to Save The Children but then buy a $350 pair of running shoes made by children in Asian sweatshops… … you might be a Woke punchline.

If you think career criminal George Floyd is a martyr but Egerton Ryerson is a genocidal racist… you might be a Woke punchline.

If you think today’s academic standards aren’t what they once were but then you go to school to berate the teacher for not communicating the curriculum properly to your indulged child… you might be a Woke punchline.

If you get to the bottom of this column without recognizing yourself in any of these contradictions… you might be a Woke punchline.