French parents want to take TikTok to court following
daughter's suicide
Canada releases its first accredited assisted suicide training curriculum
Canada has now released its first national training program in medical assistance in dying for licensed physicians and nurse practitioners. The suicide training curriculum is accredited by the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Canada and the College of Family Physicians of Canada.
In Canada, an individual does not need to have a fatal, terminal condition to be eligible for what is warmly called MAiD, the clever abbreviation for Medical Assistance in Dying. According to Health Canada: The Trudeau government “committed to supporting individuals who meet the eligibility criteria to have their MAiD request considered in a fair, safe and consistent manner, while supporting efforts to protect those who may be vulnerable, including persons who suffer from a mental illness".
How many Canadians trust the Trudeau government to be “fair, safe and consistent,” and supportive of the most vulnerable, as it promises to do in the MAiD program? Trudeau promised in 2019: “A re-elected Liberal government will make sure every Canadian has access to a family doctor, to mental health services, to affordable prescription drugs and to national pharmacare,” and “to boost health care funding by $6 billion over the coming four years.” As expected, the big spender Trudeau lied. But there’s one area to which he has proven to be dedicated: his government’s assisted suicide program.
According to official Opposition leader Pierre Poilievre, “some people are suffering from mental health disorders because of the government’s policies.”
After eight years of Justin Trudeau, everything feels broken and people feel broken. That’s why many are suffering from depression and they’re losing hope.
Conservative MP Ed Fast added that “it is deeply concerning that this government appears to be moving from a culture of life to a culture of death.”
In 2019, Trudeau announced his intention to “bring in legislation to expand access to medical assistance in dying” and commissioned “expert panels” to investigate “other areas of assisted death, including advance requests and extending the right to mature minors and people with severe psychiatric disorders.” In case you might be wondering what a “mature minor” means, it refers to a child who is deemed by a healthcare provider to be mature enough to give consent to his or her death. So MAiD-participating healthcare providers are afforded the powers of the state to decide whether to give their stamp of approval to this decision, with no sufficient oversight possible. Canadians must simply trust in their opinions in a way that is very different from healing and the pledge to “do no harm.”
The Conservatives are now working to repeal the MAiD law. In the face of opposition:
On February 2, 2023, the federal government announced plans to delay MAiD eligibility for people whose sole medical condition is mental illness until March 17, 2024. This is a one year delay from the original timeline. They said that this delay will provide them with more time to develop practice standards and training, and to allow for better data collection and sharing.
Bear in mind that mental health is a legal factor in weighing the ability of an individual to participate in court proceedings. That’s because the individual may not be reliable, due to the instability caused by mental illness. When one applies this reasoning to MAiD accessibility, how can a mentally and psychologically sound decision be made by a deeply distressed mentally ill individual?
Society lacks resources to care for the suffering. Given the financial and emotional demands in Western societies, devoted caregivers are in scarce supply, so the state has moved in with a solution to end their lives, rather than create more humane ways to care for them. Meanwhile, the Trudeau government’s waste is profuse and record breaking. No other government in Canadian history has seen such reckless spending. Then there is Trudeau’s unethical spending. Add in Trudeau’s suicidal immigration policies (no pun intended), and all this is breaking the backs of taxpayers in a severely broken system that he created.
Trudeau’s solution to help those in need is to offer services to end their miserable lives legally, in their deepest moment of despair. He continues to make headway. In February, a parliamentary committee recommended in a report tabled in the House of Commons that medical assistance in dying “should be expanded to include minors” with a restriction attached. The child’s natural death must be “reasonably foreseeable.” Last year, the Trudeau government even funded an assisted suicide activity book for kids: The Medical Assistance in Dying (MAiD) Activity Book.
What about medical practitioners who are opposed to participating in any part of the MAiD process on religious grounds, or simply as a matter of conscience? According to the website Dying With Dignity, the practitioner is allowed to decline. However, this isn’t straightforward. They cannot simply decline and then leave the matter up to the patient to pursue. In Ontario, “objecting providers must make an ‘effective referral to a non-objecting, available, and accessible physician, nurse practitioner or agency.’” So while a practitioner may be unwilling to participate, he or she is bound to do so by making a referral. This is reminiscent of a section in the criminal code that prohibits counseling someone to commit suicide. It states:
241 (1) Everyone is guilty of an indictable offence and liable to imprisonment for a term of not more than 14 years who, whether suicide ensues or not,
(a) counsels a person to die by suicide or abets a person in dying by suicide; or
(b) aids a person to die by suicide.
To some health practitioners, forcing them to “make an effective referral” would be regarded as a morally egregious offense that would be no different from counseling someone to commit suicide. Such a requirement violates a practitioner’s right to exercise his or her moral conscience and religious freedom.
The moral decay in Canada and woeful disregard for human and religious rights across the board is becoming increasingly evident and severe. Take, for instance, the “rights” afforded by the state to a child to make life-altering decisions about gender at a turbulent time in life. A National Post article, Some parents object as Canadian schools quietly aid students’ gender transition, revealed that school boards “are urging schools to both automatically honor request to change a student’s name and pronouns, and not to tell parents if requested.”
The Trudeau government’s MAiD program is presented as kind and caring, as is “gender affirming care.” Many, in their moments of pain, will trust their government to be “fair, safe and consistent,” as the government promises. Yet ironically, if a poll were taken on how many Canadians actually trust the Trudeau government, the results will be dismal for Trudeau.
======================================================================
A Pride flag ban sparks accusations of betrayal in
tiny Michigan city
by Allan Lengel, Washington Post, September 17, 2023:
HAMTRAMCK, Mich. — This city of 28,000 was once so Polish it was dubbed “Little Warsaw.” But in recent decades, an influx of immigrants gave Hamtramck new character. Bengali and Arabic joined English on signs at City Hall. Yemeni and Bangladeshi mosques, restaurants and shops proliferated.
And last year, a Muslim who emigrated from Yemen as a teenager became mayor — the city’s first leader in nearly a century with no Polish roots — alongside what is believed to be the nation’s only all-Muslim city council.
Many residents in this tiny enclave just north of downtown Detroit saw these changes as a sign of the Hamtramck’s progressiveness. The Muslim community that had previously experienced discrimination, including voter intimidation and resistance to mosques’ public call to prayer, had finally taken its seats at the table.
Yet the ethnic, cultural and religious diversity that made Hamtramck something of a model is being put severely to the test. In June, after divisive debate, the six-member council blocked the display of Pride flags on city property — action that has angered allies and members of the LGBTQ+ community, who feel that the support they provided the immigrant groups has been reciprocated with betrayal.
“We welcomed you,” former council member Catrina Stackpoole, a retired social worker who identifies as gay, recalls telling the council this summer. “We created nonprofits to help feed, clothe, find housing. We did everything we could to make your transition here easier, and this is how you repay us, by stabbing us in the back?”
The council’s unanimous vote in the middle of Pride Month seemed intentional to Stackpoole and others, though the resolution banned not only the rainbow flag but all flags except for the U.S., state, city and POW/MIA banners. Mayor Amer Ghalib, 43, defends the action as one of neutrality, saying no group should be able to promote a political agenda on city property.
“We’re not targeting anybody,” he said recently. “We are trying to close the door for other groups that could be extremist or racist.”
Not everyone buys that.
“The sole purpose was absolutely to go after the gay pride flag,” maintains Josh Hansknecht, a local middle school teacher and president of the Hamtramck Queer Alliance. The issue has laid bare tension between the LGBTQ+ community and socially conservative Muslims like the mayor….
Suella Braverman says LGBT, gender discrimination
not grounds for asylum
By Paul Godfrey
Sept. 26 (UPI) -- British Home Secretary Suella Braverman will tell an audience in Washington on Tuesday that protecting LGBT people and women fleeing discrimination is unsustainable and should not be considered grounds for asylum because it could lead to almost 800 million people moving to another country.
Braverman will make the claim in a speech to the right-leaning American Enterprise Institute arguing for changes to the 1951 U.N. refugee convention, according to excerpts briefed to British media in advance.
She is expected to say that the number of people on which the convention confers protection has risen from an original 2 million in Europe to conferring the right to move to another country upon "at least 780 million people," citing analysis from Britain's center-right Center for Policy Studies.
"It is therefore incumbent upon politicians and thought leaders to ask whether the refugee convention, and the way it has come to be interpreted through our courts, is fit for our modern age or whether it is in need of reform.
"I think most members of the public would recognize those fleeing a real risk of death, torture, oppression or violence, are in need of protection. However, as case law has developed, what we have seen in practice is an interpretive shift away from 'persecution', in favor of something more akin to a definition of 'discrimination,'" Braverman will say.
"Let me be clear, there are vast swathes of the world where it is extremely difficult to be gay, or to be a woman. Where individuals are being persecuted, it is right that we offer sanctuary.
"But we will not be able to sustain an asylum system if in effect, simply being gay, or a woman, and fearful of discrimination in your country of origin, is sufficient to qualify for protection."
Braverman's comments came in for strong criticism from human rights groups and the Labor opposition.
"LGBTQI+ people are tortured in many countries for who they are and who they love, and their pain is no less than other survivors we treat in our therapy rooms," said Freedom from Torture chief executive Sonya Sceats.
"They deserve precisely the same protection too. For a liberal democracy like Britain to try to weaken protection for this community is shameful."
Shadow Home Secretary Yvette Cooper accused Braverman of ramping up the rhetoric making it harder for Britain to work with other countries on the issue and "chasing headlines abroad to try and distract from her total failure to tackle Tory asylum chaos at home."
"International conventions aren't responsible for appalling Tory failures to go after the criminal smuggling gangs, to take asylum decisions or clear the backlog," she wrote on social media. "Those failures are the responsibility of [Prime Minister] Rishi Sunak and Suella Braverman.
"We need more international cooperation to stop smugglers and trafficking gangs, establish return agreements and make sure countries work together to ensure those fleeing persecution and conflict get sanctuary. But Braverman rhetoric makes it harder to get countries to work with us."
Braverman has been forging ahead with a series of controversial immigration and asylum policies -- most of which are stalled -- from accommodating asylum seekers on barges instead of costly hotels to trying to push through a scheme launched by her predecessor, Priti Patel, to send asylum seekers to Rwanda for processing.
The first part of the scheme, the Illegal Migration Act under which asylum seekers who arrive without permission will be detained and deported to their own or a "third safe country", passed into law in July, but the Rwanda policy is stalled in the courts which have ruled that Rwanda is not a safe country.
Britain currently has no similar arrangement with any other country, meaning removals are on hold indefinitely.
=====================================================================================
No comments:
Post a Comment