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Health

Tens of thousands are dying on waiting lists following decades of media reluctance to debate healthcare

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The Rewrite

Peter Menzies's avatar Peter Menzies

Better thousands of us die prematurely, apparently, than risk a grownup conversation

About the same time as William Watson’s outstanding book Globalization and the Meaning of Canadian Life was being published in the late 1990s, the newspaper I worked for was sending a journalist to Europe to research a series of articles on how health care systems work in some of those countries.

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I mention Bill’s book, which was runner-up for a public policy Donner Prize, because it exquisitely details many of the things Canadians believe about themselves that simply aren’t true. Which was the same reason why the Calgary Herald sent its health reporter (yes, there used to be such a thing), Robert Walker, to Europe – to expose its readers to the fact that there are more than two health care systems: our “defining” one and America’s, both of which are extremes. To the best of my knowledge, that remains the only time a Canadian news organization has taken on that task.

In every country examined in Walker’s reports, as is the case with almost every country in the world, public and private health care and insurance systems maintained a peaceful coexistence and the public’s needs were being met. Almost 30 years later, that remains the case. Also almost 30 years later, neither Bill’s book nor the Herald’s reporting has had the slightest impact on the prevailing media narrative in Canada. It remains determined to perpetuate the fear that any move to increase the role of private health providers or even allow doctors to work in both systems (as was proposed this week by Alberta Premier Danielle Smith) is the first step on the slippery slope to “American-style” health care. This line has been successfully used for decades – often hyperbolically and occasionally hysterically – by public monopoly advocates for Canada’s increasingly expensive and difficult to access systems. We have known for 40 years that once Baby Boomers like your faithful servant turned bald and grey that the system would be unsustainable. But that single, terrifying “American-style” slur has halted reform at every turn.

The Tyee responded with a “Danielle Smith’s secret plan to Destroy Public Health Care” column while the Globe and Mail’s Gary Mason, a Boomer, challenged my thesis here by suggesting it was time for open minds because “the reality is, the health care system in Canada is a mess.”

It is. And at least some of the blame – a lot, in my view – belongs at the door of Canadian news organizations that for decades have failed to fully inform readers by making them aware that there are a great many alternatives to just “ours” and “US-style.”

I was reminded of this in a recent Postmedia story concerning the perils of private health care provision. Referencing a study on MRIs, the story, right on cue, quotes the part of a study that states “It’s a quiet but rapid march toward U.S.-style health care.”

One would not want to suggest that those clinging to that parochial view should be denied a platform. But at the same time, readers have every right to demand that journalists push back and ask advocates for state monopolies simple questions such as “Why do you say that? Could it not be the first step towards UK-, German-, Dutch-, French-, Portugese- or Swedish-style health care?” and open the debate.

But, as it was 30 years ago and likely ever shall be, there is nothing to suggest that approach even crossed the reporter’s mind. Canadians deserve to be fully informed on major public policy matters and the record shows that when it comes to health care, media have largely failed to do so. Stuck in the fetid trench of an us and them narrative that compares two systems at extreme ends of the spectrum, the public is largely unaware that moderate alternatives exist, ensuring that no meaningful reforms will ever take place and tens of thousands of Canadians will continue to die on waiting lists – a story that continues to be of little interest within the mainstream. Better thousands of us die prematurely, apparently, than risk a grownup conversation that could challenge our national mythology and lead us down the path to “European-style” healthcare.

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Postmedia’s Brian Lilley has written a defence of the use by journalists of anonymous sources. Lilley’s introduction describes him as coming down on both sides of the issue and that “Using anonymous sources is completely justified, if done right.” Well of course it is, but in my view it’s frequently and increasingly not being done right and its abuse is being exploited by government comms people to control the narrative.

An example of that occurred last week when the Globe and Mail, in a story concerning Prime Minister Mark Carney’s sojourn to the United Arab Emirates, declined to reveal the identity of a source offering very standard information. To wit:

“The (senior government) official, whom The Globe and Mail is not identifying because they were not authorized to speak publicly, said this visit matters because the UAE economy is very much driven by personal relationships – the kind that benefit from face-to-face meetings.”

This story had three bylines – from a senior parliamentary reporter, an institutional investing reporter and an economics reporter. It is inconceivable to me that, between them, they couldn’t find an on the record source who could explain how important it is, culturally, to have face to face meetings, particularly in that part of the world. Doing so would have added some needed thump to a “sources say” story and helped mute criticisms by others in the industry such as John Robson and Holly Doan, the latter stating in a Tweet that “Anon sources are gov’t propagandists.” Others have privately expressed their dismay.

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Meanwhile, I expect Lilley’s piece is worth a read and it’s important to hear all sides but as it is behind a paywall I haven’t got to it myself. It’s also worth pointing out that a recent Reuters Institute survey put Lilley in Canada’s top 10 social media influencers and creators.

Sadly, we have more this week on unnecessary online smartassery by journalists.

First up is Global News’s Sean O’Shea who managed to allow himself to look like a member of Carney’s comms team when he Tweeted his disapproval of some fans’ behaviour at the Grey Cup.

Then came The Hill Times’s Stu Benson, who blasted his alarm from a loudspeaker before deleting.

Honestly, folks, to paraphrase grandpa’s advice and as I have to remind myself from time to time, just because something pops into your head doesn’t mean it has to pop onto your social media feed.

Last week’s column for The Hub on how Diversity, Equity and Inclusion initiatives remain alive and enforced in the nation’s newsrooms is available here. And don’t forget to watch out for the Full Press podcast with myself, Harrison Lowman and Tara Henley on Thursday.

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(Peter Menzies is a commentator and consultant on media, Macdonald-Laurier Institute Senior Fellow, a past publisher of the Calgary Herald, a former vice chair of the CRTC and a National Newspaper Award winner.)

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I Was Hired To Root Out Bias At NIH. The Nation’s Health Research Agency Is Still Sick

Published on November 22, 2025

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From the Daily Caller News Foundation

By Joe Duarte

Federal agencies like the National Institutes of Health (NIH) continue to fund invalid, ideologically driven “scientific” research that subsidizes leftist activists and harms conservatives and the American people at large. There’s currently no plan to stop.

Conversely, NIH does not fund obvious research topics that would help the American people, because of institutional leftist bias.

While serving as a senior advisor at NIH, I discovered many active grants like these:

“Examining Anti-Racist Healing in Nature to Protect Telomeres of Transitional Age BIPOC for Health Equity” — Take minority teens to parks in a bid to reduce telomere erosion (the shortening of repetitive DNA sequences as we age). $3.8 million in five years and no results published – not surprising, given their absurd premise.

“Ecological Momentary Assessment of Racial/Ethnic Microaggressions and Cannabis Use among Black Adults” – This rests on an invalid leftist ideological concept – “microaggressions.” An example of a “microaggression” is a white person denying he’s racist. They can’t be validly measured since they’re simply defined into existence by Orwellian leftist ideology, with no attempt to discover the alleged aggressor’s motives.

“Influence of Social Media, Social Networks, and Misinformation on Vaccine Acceptance Among Black and Latinx Individuals” — from an activist who said the phrase “The coronavirus is genetically engineered” was “misinformation” and also conducted a bizarre, partisan study based entirely on a Trump tweet about recovering from COVID.

The study claimed that people saw COVID as less “serious” after the tweet. I apologize for the flashback to when Democrats demanded everyone feel the exact level of COVID panic and anti-optimism they felt (and share their false beliefs on the efficacy of school closures, masks, and vaccines ). NIH funded this study and gave him another $651,586 in July for his new “misinformation” study, including $200,000 from the Office of the Director.

I’m a social psychologist who has focused on the harms of ideological bias in academic research. Our sensemaking institutions have been gashed by a cult political ideology that treats its conjectures and abstractions as descriptively true, without argument or even explanation, and enforces conformity with inhumane psychologizing and ostracism. This ideology – which dominates academia and NIH – poses an unprecedented threat to our connection to reality, and thus to science, by vaporizing the distinction between descriptive reality and ideological tenets.

In March, I emailed Jay Bhattacharya, Director of NIH, and pitched him on how I could build an objective framework to eliminate ideological bias in NIH-funded research.

Jay seemed to agree with my analysis. We spoke on the phone, and I started in May as a senior advisor to Jay in the Office of the Director (NIH-OD).

I never heard from Jay again beyond a couple of cursory replies.

For four months, I read tons of grants, passed a lengthy federal background check, started to build the pieces, and contacted Jay about once a week with questions, follow-up, and example grants. Dead air – he was ghosting me.

Jay also bizarrely deleted the last two months’ worth of my messages to him but kept the older ones. I’d sent him a two-page framework summary, asked if I should keep working on it, and also asked if I’d done something wrong, given his persistent lack of response. No response.

In September, the contractors working at NIH-OD, me included, were laid off. No explanation was given.

I have no idea what happened here. It’s been the strangest and most unprofessional experience of my career.

The result is that NIH is still funding ideological, scientifically invalid research and will continue to ignore major topics because of leftist bias. We have a precious opportunity for lasting reform, and that opportunity will be lost without a systematic approach to eliminating ideology in science.

What’s happened so far is that DOGE cut some grants earlier this year, after a search for DEI terms. It was a good first step but caught some false positives and missed most of the ideological research, including many grants premised on “microaggressions,” “systemic racism,” “intersectionality,” and other proprietary, question-begging leftist terms. Leftist academics are already adapting by changing their terminology – this meme is popular on Bluesky:

DOGE didn’t have the right search terms, and a systematic, objective anti-bias framework is necessary to do the job. It’s also more legally resilient and persuasive to reachable insiders — there’s no way to reform a huge bureaucracy without getting buy-in from some insiders (yes, you also have to fire some people). This mission requires empowered people at every funding agency who are thoroughly familiar with leftist ideology, can cleanly define “ideology,” and build robust frameworks to remove it from scientific research.

My framework identifies four areas of bias so far:

  1. Ideological research
  2. Rigged research
  3. Ideological denial of science / suppression of data
  4. Missing research – research that would happen if not for leftist bias

The missing research at NIH likely hurts the most — e.g. American men commit suicide at unusually high rates, especially white and American Indian men, yet NIH funds no research on this. But they do fund “Hypertension Self-management in Refugees Living in San Diego.”

Similarly, NIH is AWOL on the health benefits of religious observance and prayer, a promising area of research that Muslim countries are taking the lead on. These two gaping holes suggest that NIH is indifferent to the American people and even culturally and ideologically hostile them.

Joe Duarte grew up in small copper-mining towns in Southern Arizona, earned his PhD in social psychology, and focuses on political bias in media and academic research. You can find his work here, find him on X here, and contact him at gravity at protonmail.com.

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Great Reset

EXCLUSIVE: The Nova Scotia RCMP Veterans’ Association IS TARGETING VETERANS with Euthanasia

Published on November 20, 2025

By

Kelsi Sheren

Kelsi Sheren

I just received an email from a retired member of the RCMP…

“I served for 32 years on the West Coast and retired in 2019. As a Christian and a retired member of the RCMP I wanted to share this with you. I’m trying to wrap my head around this shocking email. I’m shocked it’s come to this.” – L.K

SATURDAY, NOV. 22, 2025

1:30-3:00 PM CHURCH HALL, OLD SACKVILLE ROAD, MIDDLE SACVILLE, NS, B4E 1R3.

On November 20th, an email quietly dropped into the inboxes of Nova Scotia RCMP veterans. Standard, polite and in true Canadian fashion formal and sanitized. This was no mistake, this wasn’t information. This was something different.

This was grooming.

Yes I said it, coercion.

The “opportunity” was a “Medical Assistance in Dying (MAID) Program in Nova Scotia”

This is a state-aligned institutions normalizing death as a service to the very people they already failed to support in life .This was a information session, to “educate” veterans who’s rates of PTSD and suicidality were already sky hight. How they can apply or use MAID.

The invited speaker?

Dr. Gordon Gubitz

Location? None other than a place of worship, a church hall. The target audience?

VETERANS.

This is what I’ve been talking about, welcome to the soft-coercive stage of Canada’s MAID regime.

Let’s meet Dr. Gordon Gubitz. The same Dr. Gubitz whois a MAID assessor and provider (killer) is the Clinical Lead for MAID in Nova Scotia, which means MAID is his not only his passion but spends his work focused on ending lives. This “Dr” sits on the board of CAMAP, the pro death organization that creates all the pathways for Canadians to be killed while manipulating the court systems in their favour. More death to them is the goal. This “Dr” helped write the national MAID curriculum and trains doctors on how to present MAID as a “care option.” This guy is literally a death pusher and peddler of the dark.

Think of him a the drug dealer for death.

They didn’t invite a trauma specialist.
They didn’t invite a palliative expert.
They didn’t invite a police mental-health advocate.

They didn’t invite a mental health expert

They didn’t invite a Dr who looks at psychedelic assisted therapy

They didn’t invite hope. They only invited death.

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Nova Scotia RCMP veterans invited a man whose job is to facilitate, provide and promote nothing but death, and whose organization teaches clinicians how to introduce MAID (assisted SUICIDE) to patients who didn’t ask for it, bring it up or want it in their life.

Let me explain something, If you’re a veteran dealing with PTSD, chronic pain, TBI, disability, or bureaucracy-induced despair, this isn’t “education.”

This is targeted psychological pressure.

Coercion, CAMAP and Dying with Dignity’s claim to fame.

No one will say the words out loud. No one will write “we think some of you should consider dying.”

They don’t need to, when just dangling the carrot is good enough to get the job done.

Coercion today is subtle, normalized in the community. It’s dressed up like Christmas cookies in a church call, framed as loving “support” being held by one of the most prolific death pushers in the game.

Simply funnelling veterans into the system one “information session” at a time. Like cattle through the gates of hell, with CAMAP waiting in the shadows. This time not with a bold gun. They would see that as “too humane”, but with a pen, check list, a needle and a paralytic.

Canada already proved it’s willing to dangle MAID (assisted suicide, murder, early death) in front of struggling veterans. I helped break these stories and bring our veterans stories to the masses. I’m interviewing more by the day, who’ve been offered death over life illegally.

VAC employees got caught offering MAID to veterans who never asked for it, including one trying to get a wheelchair ramp, my friend Christine.

So do me a favour spare us the “this is innocent” act.

Veterans have been coerced before, and it’s happening again right in front of your faces. Now the RCMP Veterans’ Association is rolling out the red carpet for the prevailers of death. The dark ones who feed on the souls of those who couldn’t bare to take another breath.

This is not an “opportunity.”
This is a sales pitch.
And the product is your death.

People keep asking me why veterans are being targeting? Because they’re the perfect targets, don’t you see?

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Veterans, on the daily are dealing with chronic pain, combat trauma, moral injury, sanctuary trauma, disability, suicidality, lack of services, financial strain, bureaucratic obstruction and the government doesn’t just know know it, it caused it and it supports it and so do the MAID, pro death cult architects.

The MAID lobby knows veterans are “high-yield” candidates, and not because they want to die, but because the system has already worn them down, like water slowly dripping over the rocks. The Liberal government just cut OVER 4 BILLION in care for veterans. Veterans aren’t being shown the full picture, they aren’t given any hope. They’re being shown the early exit. What we call in some circles, being shown the path to “self-selection.”

This RCMP veterans email is a soft-touch version of coercion if I’ve ever seen one.
“We’re not telling you to choose MAID… we’re just putting the idea on the table, in a friendly community space, with a trusted expert who helps design the national MAID system.” Who’s job is to provide you with all the pathways to wanting to kill yourself.

That’s how you manipulate a vulnerable population without leaving fingerprints.

Dr. Gubitz isn’t neutral. He is the system.

Gubitz isn’t walking into that church as an independent medical educator.

He is walking in as the clinical gatekeeper for MAID in Nova Scotia, IE. HELL. He’s nothing more than one of the ideological engines behind national MAID training. A CAMAP insider, the organization pushing to expand and normalize MAID (assisted SUICIDE) at every level of “healthcare,” if you can even call it that anymore. CAMAP literally publishes guidance on how clinicians should bring up MAID as a care option. Not reactively. Proactively.

When you pair a vulnerable group with a man trained to present MAID as “equitable access,” your “information session” becomes a recruitment funnel.

HOW IS EVERYONE OK WITH THIS?

You are directly influencing and priming veterans for death under the banner of “support.” It’s an illusion, it’s predatory behaviour! It’s not informed consent in any way. It’s manipulation.

And holding it in a church? That’s strategic psychological laundering.

Churches are trusted spaces. They lower defences, help you to open your mind. Churches to most signal moral legitimacy so hosting a MAID talk in a church hall tells veterans “your community approves. Your faith approves this is acceptable, this is dignified, you don’t have to fight or feel guilty, ”

It cloaks a controversial, ethically fraught practice in community warmth. It’s taking advantage of the safety and sanctity of church.

That’s not an accident.
It’s a tactic.

This wreaks of propaganda wrapped in hospitality.

This is the playbook of a system that wants to solve suffering by eliminating the sufferer.

Canada won’t fix the care gaps. It won’t fix the mental-health crisis. It won’t fix VAC’s failures and it sure as hell won’t fix disability supports.

But it will happily fund a national MAID curriculum, expand eligibility, remove guardrails, and now apparently send MAID providers on a tour of vulnerable communities.

Veterans have always been canaries in Canada’s moral coal mine.

If the state can normalize MAID to the people who wore its uniform, it can normalize it to anyone. And that’s the point.

This story isn’t about one email. It’s about a culture shift engineered from the top down.

This is how you create acceptance – – >

First, make MAID look compassionate.

Then, bring it into community spaces.

Then, present to vulnerable groups.

Then, call it “support.”

Then, remove the stigma.

Then, remove the safeguards.

Then, expand eligibility.

Then, tell the public: “People are choosing MAID because it’s dignified.”

They leave out the part where the system helped manufacture despair.

Veterans deserve better than an invitation to die.

They deserve care, treatment, advocacy, and someone who doesn’t treat their suffering as a problem to be erased.

Not a church basement with coffee and a state-aligned MAID architect explaining their “options.”

This email isn’t benign.

It is a warning, one Canada should have heeded years ago.

If the country is comfortable offering death to the people who served it, it’s comfortable offering it to anyone.

And that’s exactly what’s happening.

Please feel free to call or email them and let them know how this makes you feel.

KELSI SHEREN

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