Opinion
V: Remember Remember the 3rd of November
The power of speculative fiction is amazing.
Consider the examples of Brave New World, Animal Farm, 1984 and V. Their dystopian visions of our collective future was shocking, yet it was only recently that the power of the fiction was evident. Everything that was previously written is passing before our eyes.
Last year, V, was merely a brilliant film that is becoming a classic dystopian classic. This year, its power to predict the abuse of power, the misuse of the power of truth, and the power of the written and spoken word coming to fruition.
Comic book writer Alan Moore was THE brightest, most brilliant, creative writers in our modern comic book era (1980 onward). His work on Swamp thing turned what was a mediocre book and character into a must-read gothic horror.
His exploration of a country ruled by a malevolent, all powerful evil chancellor with conspiracy undertones, with absolute control over thoughts, censorship and information is becoming all too familiar. Near the end of the film, the government (under guise), has released an Avian pandemic, an airborne virus and civil war continues stoked by secret research. While V is telling his story near the middle of the film, he notes two important things; Fear is the weapon of the government AND a politician is elected who is a devil incarnate with absolute power with no empathy.
The Chancellor and his advisors also exhibit the use of government spin over a long series of events. In the film, the first bombing by V is claimed by the government to be the unscheduled Bailey demolition and the 1812 Overture just a bonus. During the narrative, the airborne virus is blamed on a Catholic Institution allegedly researching with bio warfare. Their use of government spin to divert the public from the true activities of V is a common tool in the kit of propaganda and image publicity, a practise that has descended into Virtue Signalling today and has given rise to a negative view of ‘conspiracy,’ or views that run counter to the ‘official’ story released by the powers that be to justify their responses.
The overwhelming visual in the film is that of the Guy Fawkes Mask and its symbolism. Now, we can consider that masks in our society today represent safety to some, and unwarranted governmental control to others. Complying with mask ‘regulations’ without belief in their effectiveness or complying because of a belief in their effectiveness requires both deception and faith, two sides of a coin. Another aspect of the Guy Fawkes visage is that of anonymity. In the film, thousands and thousands of masks are distributed guaranteeing wearers the ability to hide behind the truth or behind a great lie.
Let us move from fiction to ‘reality,’ and consider the situation that our world faces in 2020.
In 2019, the worlds financial and political organizations had been signalling that the economic health of the world had been decreasing and a long-term recession was possible. In early 2020, the situation was not better.
Depending on which side of the Covid 19 coin you fall on, this dreaded virus was active in mid 2019 in Wuhan and actually had been in development by the NIH and several US Universities and laboratories prior to defunding and moved to China OR it was a real virus the Chinese government released. The global players in the virus ‘fight,’ the W.H.O., The C.D.C., pharmaceuticals, investors and government health professionals laid out a ‘pandemic’ policy that included economic shut down, lockdowns, mandatory masks and a future vaccine that would save the world, even if these measures cause more damage than they are supposed to cure.
It is incredibly fascinating that after early Covid 19 mis-steps, the original scripts remain for responses despite evidence to the contrary gathered by even the W.H.O. and the C.D.C. which suggests a reversal of their earlier stances are ignored by the masses and even called ‘conspiracy’ by the main stream media that gobbled up their extreme measures. An example of this is the revised infection and mortality rates released by the C.D.C. that shows their new creation (patented by the C.D.C.) is less dangerous than a regular flu. Even the W.H.O has deemed that lockdowns and masks are not effective and has stated that, yet government policy has not reflected this voice of ‘authority.’ If we add in the growing evidence that shows increased rates of bacteriological infections and deaths in healthy individuals due to mask usage, a clear pattern has emerged, the treatment and ‘protection’ may be worse than the disease.
Meanwhile, as I have written previously, doctors and health professionals around the world including Canada have initiated legal action against governments to defend their patients from ineffective treatments. The Great Barrington Declaration signed now by more than 54,000 professionals takes issue with government response that places politics and profit before research and fact.
The Great Barrington Declaration states that:
“Covid-19 is less dangerous than many other harms, including influenza. As immunity builds in the population, the risk of infection to all – including the vulnerable – falls. We know that all populations will eventually reach herd immunity – i.e. the point at which the rate of new infections is stable…”
Yet, if world-wide professionals have enough confidence to call upon world leaders to change their policies and treatments, why do the naysayers such as Dr. Faucci have such power to dismiss a global, scientific and research based position?
With the US election rising to a crescendo this month, a factor has arisen that shows the effectiveness of yet one more tool in the tool belt of the most powerful organizations in the world: censorship. Facebook, twitter, google and other groups routinely use ‘fact checkers’ to vet posts not inline with the approved storyline. Health related stories that question Covid 19 stats, treatments and causes are routinely buried or deleted giving rise to alternate sites that have been labeled ‘conspiracy.’
In the dystopian novels by Orwell and Huxley, censorship is used extensively to control populations and films like the Matrix explore that concept. ‘Drinking the Kool aid,’ or ‘taking the blue pill,’ are phrases used to describe those who buy the accepted storylines as fact.
As an aside, the Canadian government has posted an ad looking for a ‘Story teller.’
Censorship is not merely relegated to social media and news organizations but rather it has been entrenched in constitutions around the world now by practise.
The Canadian government has Islamophobia laws in place. Some countries have anti-covid 19 ‘news’ laws proposed. Justin Trudeau, in his response to the French attack recently noted that ‘Free speech has its limits.’ I wonder who decides those limits and on what topics.
With the sheer volume of distraction news in the media today, and the ability of search engines and platforms to rank breaking stories REAL news is lost. In the US, the various broadcast news organizations have biases, and regularly practise those. Fox, CNN, TNN, ABC, the CBC, CTV and other networks routinely present half truths and ignore pressing issues and movements that test democracy and free speech.
In the film near the end, Evey and Finch, the detective are standing beside the train loaded with explosives. V is dead in the train covered with roses.
In a scene loaded with symbolism and decisiveness, she pulls the lever and sends the train towards destruction on Guy Fawkes Day.
“This country needs more than a building right now, it needs hope,” she says and the strains of the 1812 Overture rise as the flames consume the Parliament.
Theatrical, yes.
True, yes.
Today, in every country around the world we need Hope.
US Citizens need hope that the ‘building’ of political corruption is decimated. Canadian citizens need hope that our Liberal government will take control of our raging debt before we have to mortgage the Canadian Rockies to the Chinese. Western Canadians want hope that the federal government will recognize the value of our mineral resources and allow us to develop them for economic stability. Our citizens, North American, need hope to believe that we will be allowed to shop, live, worship and raise our families without onerous regulations and penalties.
There is an image of the man known as V esca
ping from the burning St. Mary’s that encapsulates the genesis of his journey and his mission. It symbolizes our present truth vs Lie, God vs Satan, Good vs evil, freedom vs control battle struggle.
V states through narration in the film, “Beneath this mask is an idea and ideas are bulletproof.”
Cut to the 1812 Overture….
Over the past few years, I’ve had canvassers coming to my home in Toronto on behalf of a wide range of non-profits – including hospitals and mental health and homeless support organizations. The fundraisers all “wear” a noticeable post secondary student vibe. That’s hardly news.
But curiously, no matter what they’re collecting for, every last one of them uses the exact same methodology. That is, they refuse to take a one-time donation, instead insisting I sign up for six (not seven, and definitely not five) monthly payments. They don’t want me donating online through the organization’s website (explaining that they wouldn’t get credit for that). They do expect me to enter my basic information on a high-end tablet they’re carrying. When that’s done, they’ll use their smartphones to make a call to a remote agent who would take my financial information.
I only completed the process once – for the Hospital for Sick Children (SickKids) in Toronto. But that was mostly because, at the time, they were in the middle of quite literally saving my granddaughter’s life. I couldn’t very well say no.
Because of the paranoia that comes with my background in IT systems administration, I generally don’t participate, explaining that I never share financial information on a call I didn’t initiate. At the same time, these campaigns are not fraudulent and, with the possible exception of UNICEF, they all represent legitimate organizations. Nevertheless, they all come with the clear fingerprints of a third-party, for-profit company. Which makes me curious.
After a little digging, it became clear that a company called Globalfaces Direct was the most likely employer of the face-to-face (F2F) canvassers I’m seeing. It’s also obvious that those canvassers are paid at least partially through revenue-based commissions.
Estimating how much of your donations are actually used for charitable work can be difficult. For once thing, in the case of SickKids, it’s not even clear which organization the money is going to. There at least three related non-profit accounts registered with CRA: The Hospital for Sick Children, The Hospital for Sick Children Foundation, and the SickKids Charitable Giving Fund.
But even where there isn’t such ambiguity we have only limited visibility into an organization’s finances. Covenant House, for instance, issued receipts for $26 million in donations for 2024, but there’s no way to know how much of that came through Globalfaces Direct F2F campaigns. And there’s certainly no public record indicating how much of that $26 million was spent on commissions and overhead. CRA filings for Covenant House do report fundraising costs of $9.4 million in 2024, which was 22 percent of their total spending and 32 percent of all donations.
It’s likely that their $9.4 million in fundraising costs includes Globalfaces Direct’s canvasser commissions and overhead costs. But those are only some of the costs – which likely include events, direct mail, and other in-house efforts. In fact, it’s not unreasonable to assume that only 20-30 percent of each dollar raised through F2F canvassing is actually spent on charity work.
From the perspective of the non-profit, hiring F2F companies can generate new sources of stable, long-term income that would have been otherwise unattainable. Especially if the F2F agreement specifies withholding a percentage of what’s collected rather than charging a flat fee, then a non-profit has nothing to lose. Why wouldn’t SickKids or Covenant House sign up for that?
Of course, a lot of that will depend on how you think about the numbers. Taken as a whole, an organization that spends just 32 percent of their donations on fundraising activities is well within CRA guidelines: “Fundraising is acceptable unless it is a purpose of the charity (a collateral non-charitable purpose).” But if we just looked at the money raised through a F2F campaign, that percentage would likely be a lot higher.
Similarly, CRA also expects that: “Fundraising is acceptable unless it delivers a more than incidental private benefit.” In other words, if a private company like Globalfaces Direct were to realize financial gain that’s “more than incidental”, it might fail to meet CRA guidelines.
Unfortunately, there’s no easy way for donors to assess the numbers on those terms. So regular people who prefer to direct as much of their donation as possible to the actual cause will generally be far better off donating through an institution’s website or, even better, through a single CRA-friendly aggregator like CanadaHelps.org.
But it would be nice if CRA reporting rules clearly broke those numbers down so we could judge for ourselves.
Photo by Acceptable at English Wikipedia, ‘Two 1 mg pills of Hydromorphone, prescribed to me after surgery.’ [Licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons]
By Alexandra Keeler
B.C. released new witnessed dosing guidelines for safer supply opioids. Experts say they are vague, loose and toothless
This February, B.C pledged to reintroduce witnessed dosing to its controversial safer supply program.
Safer supply programs provide prescription opioids to people who use drugs. Witnessed dosing requires patients to consume those prescribed opioids under the supervision of a health-care professional, rather than taking their drugs offsite.
The province said it was reintroducing witnessed dosing to “prevent the diversion of prescribed opioids and hold bad actors accountable.”
But experts are saying the government’s interim guidelines, released April 29, are fundamentally flawed.
“These guidelines — just as any guidelines for safer supply — do not align with addiction medicine best practices, period,” said Dr. Leonara Regenstreif, a primary care physician specializing in substance use disorders. Regenstreif is a founding member of Addiction Medicine Canada, an advocacy group that represents 23 addiction specialists.
Addiction physician Dr. Michael Lester, who is also a founding member of the group, goes further.
“Tweaking a treatment protocol that should not have been implemented in the first place without prior adequate study is not much of an advancement,” he said.
Witnessed dosing
Initially, B.C.’s safer supply program was generally administered through witnessed dosing. But in 2020, to facilitate access amidst pandemic restrictions, the province moved to “take-home dosing,” allowing patients to take their prescription opioids offsite.
After pandemic restrictions were lifted, the province did not initially return to witnessed dosing. Rather, it did so only recently, after a bombshell government report alleged more than 60 B.C. pharmacies were boosting sales by encouraging patients to fill unnecessary opioid prescriptions. This incentivized patients to sell their medications on the black market.
B.C.’s interim guidelines, developed by the BC Centre on Substance Use at the government’s request, now require all new safer supply patients to begin with witnessed dosing.
But for existing patients, the guidelines say prescribers have discretion to determine whether to require witnessed dosing. The guidelines define an existing patient as someone who was dispensed prescription opioids within the past 30 days.
The guidelines say exemptions to witnessed dosing are permitted under “extraordinary circumstances,” where witnessed dosing could destabilize the patient or where a prescriber uses “best clinical judgment” and determines diversion risk is “very low.”
Holes
Clinicians say the guidelines are deliberately vague.
Regenstreif described them as “wordy, deliberately confusing.” They enable prescribers to carry on as before, she says.
Lester agrees. Prescribers would be in compliance with these guidelines even if “none of their patients are transferred to witnessed dosing,” he said.
In his view, the guidelines will fail to meet their goal of curbing diversion.
And without witnessed dosing, diversion is nearly impossible to detect. “A patient can take one dose a day and sell seven — and this would be impossible to detect through urine testing,” Lester said.
He also says the guidelines do not remove the incentive for patients to sell their drugs to others. He cites estimates from Addiction Medicine Canada that clients can earn up to $20,000 annually by selling part of their prescribed supply.
“[Prescribed safer supply] can function as a form of basic income — except that the community is being flooded with addictive and dangerous opioids,” Lester said.
Regenstreif warns that patients who had been diverting may now receive unnecessarily high doses. “Now you’re going to give people a high dose of opioids who don’t take opioids,” she said.
She also says the guidelines leave out important details on adjusting doses for patients who do shift from take-home to witnessed dosing.
“If a doctor followed [the guidelines] to the word, and the patient followed it to the word, the patient would go into withdrawal,” she said.
The guidelines assume patients will swallow their pills under supervision, but many crush and inject them instead, Regenstreif says. Because swallowing is less potent, a higher dose may be needed.
“None of that is accounted for in this document,” she said.
Survival strategy
Some harm reduction advocates oppose a return to witnessed dosing, saying it will deter people from accessing a regulated drug supply.
Some also view diversion as a life-saving practice.
Diversion is “a harm reduction practice rooted in mutual aid,” says a 2022 document developed by the National Safer Supply Community of Practice, a group of clinicians and harm reduction advocates.
The group supports take-home dosing as part of a broader strategy to improve access to safer supply medications. In their document, they say barriers to accessing safer supply programs necessitate diversion among people who use drugs — and that the benefits of diversion outweigh the risks.
However, the risks — and harms — of diversion are mounting.
People can quickly develop a tolerance to “safer” opioids and then transition to more dangerous substances. Some B.C. teenagers have said the prescription opioid Dilaudid was a stepping stone to them using fentanyl. In some cases, diversion of these drugs has led to fatal overdoses.
More recently, a Nanaimo man was sentenced to prison for running a highly organized drug operation that trafficked diverted safer supply opioids. He exchanged fentanyl and other illicit drugs for prescription pills obtained from participants in B.C.’s safer supply program.
Recovery
Lester, of Addiction Medicine Canada, believes clinical discretion has gone too far. He says take-home dosing should be eliminated.
“Best practices in addiction medicine assume physicians prescribing is based on sound and thorough research, and ensuring that their prescribing does not cause harm to the broader community, as well as the patient,” he said.
“[Safer supply] for opioids fails in both these regards.”
He also says safer supply should only be offered as a short-term bridge to patients being started on proven treatments like buprenorphine or methadone, which help reduce drug cravings and manage withdrawal symptoms.
B.C.’s witnessed dosing guidelines say prescribers can discuss such treatment options with patients. However, the guidelines remain neutral on whether safer supply is intended as a transitional step toward longer-term treatment.
Regenstreif says this neutrality undermines care.
“[M]ost patients I’ve seen with opioid use disorder don’t want to have [this disorder],” she said. “They would rather be able to set goals and do other things.”
Oversight gaps
Currently, about 3,900 people in B.C. participate in the safer supply program — down from 5,200 in March 2023.
The B.C. government has not provided data on how many have been transitioned to witnessed dosing. Investigative journalist Rob Shaw recently reported that these data do not exist.
“The government … confirmed recently they don’t have any mechanism to track which ‘safe supply’ participants are witnessed and which [are] not,” said Elenore Sturko, a Conservative MLA for Surrey-Cloverdale, who has been a vocal critic of safer supply.
“Without a public report and accountability there can be no confidence.”
The BC Centre on Substance Use, which developed the interim guidelines, says it does not oversee policy decisions or data tracking. It referred Canadian Affairs’ questions to B.C.’s Ministry of Health, which has yet to clarify whether it will track and publish transition data. The ministry did not respond to requests for comment by deadline.
B.C. has also not indicated when or whether it will release final guidelines.
Regenstreif says the flawed guidelines mean many people may be misinformed, discouraged or unsupported when trying to reduce their drug use and recover.
“We’re not listening to people with lived experience of recovery,” she said.
This article was produced through the Breaking Needles Fellowship Program, which provided a grant to Canadian Affairs, a digital media outlet, to fund journalism exploring addiction and crime in Canada. Articles produced through the Fellowship are co-published by Break The Needle and Canadian Affairs.
Subscribe to Break The Needle
Before Trudeau average annual immigration was 617,800. Under Trudeau number skyrocketted to 1.4 million annually
FDA requires new warning on mRNA COVID shots due to heart damage in young men
Blackouts Coming If America Continues With Biden-Era Green Frenzy, Trump Admin Warns
Canada’s euthanasia regime is already killing the disabled. It’s about to get worse
-
Fraser Institute1 day ago
Before Trudeau average annual immigration was 617,800. Under Trudeau number skyrocketted to 1.4 million annually
-
MAiD1 day ago
Canada’s euthanasia regime is already killing the disabled. It’s about to get worse
-
Frontier Centre for Public Policy1 day agoNew Book Warns The Decline In Marriage Comes At A High Cost
-
Business1 day agoPrime minister can make good on campaign promise by reforming Canada Health Act
-
Addictions1 day ago‘Over and over until they die’: Drug crisis pushes first responders to the brink
-
International1 day agoChicago suburb purchases childhood home of Pope Leo XIV
-
Daily Caller1 day agoUSAID Quietly Sent Thousands Of Viruses To Chinese Military-Linked Biolab
-
Business2 days ago103 Conflicts and Counting Unprecedented Ethics Web of Prime Minister Mark Carney