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Nation First explores how life is considered when a health system becomes utterly corrupted.

He served his nation and yet he was told by his own government to kill himself.

In August, the head of a Canadian veteran’s support group spoke out in horror about a veteran suffering from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder being casually told to kill themselves by the Canadian Department of Veterans Affairs.

How did such a situation come into being?

For those that don’t know, human euthanasia, termed Medical Assistance In Dying (MAID), has been legal in Canada since 2016.

And that veteran was told to end his life via MAID.

Slippery Slope

In 2021, the government passed a law that allowed a broader group of people to be eligible for MAID.

This resulted in some 10,000 being legally killed in the country last year, accounting for 3.3 per cent of all deaths in the country that year.

By contrast, palliative care is accessible to only a minority of Canadians.

In fact, despite the Canadian government touting its healthcare system as one that is ‘free’ and ‘quality’, patients have to wait an astonishing 25.6 weeks on average for treatment.

This has led to an increasing number of Canadians seeking treatment in the United States, whose healthcare system is often derided in popular culture.

Those who can’t afford such a trip probably look to MAID as a solution.

The Canadian government, clearly not satisfied with the current MAID death count, aims to increase the tally further by making people suffering from mental illnesses to be eligible for the euthanasia program.

While the government claims that MAID is only a last resort for those who have conditions that cannot be treated otherwise and that there are various safeguards to prevent its abuse, the facts on the ground tell a different story.

Vulnerable

The life of 61-year-old Alan Nichol was taken via MAID because he was suffering from hearing loss.

This was done without the consent of Nichol’s family, as it is not required to get such consent under Canadian law.

In fact, the family was not even informed of the decision.

Only two years ago, a disabled woman from Vancouver was considering termination because her treatments weren’t covered by the country’s ‘free’ healthcare for her illness.

It is unknown if that woman died via MAID.

In another sad case, a 51-year-old Ontario woman with chemical sensitivity was forced into opting for euthanasia because the Department of Housing wouldn’t provide her a chemical-free way of living.

Eight days before her death, she said:

“The government sees me as expendable trash, a complainer, useless, and a pain in the ass.”

Many people have come out to protest the fact that Canadian public healthcare workers, from doctors to caregivers, are actively pressuring their patients to partake in ‘assisted dying’ rather than continue being an ‘expense’ to or problem for the government.

Mirroring the Past

As some astute readers of history might realise, the Canadian MAID program that mainly preys on the disabled and the infirm draws strong parallels with another state-sponsored program of the past: Aktion T4.

This was a Nazi-run program that took place from 1939 to 1945 involving the mass murder of patients deemed “incurably sick”.

Tim Stainton who is Director of the Canadian Institute for Inclusion and Citizenship has made a direct comparison to the Nazi death program, saying that Canada’s MAID law is “is probably the biggest existential threat to disabled people since the Nazis’ program in Germany in the 1930s.”

MAID and Aktion T4 are what happens when the healthcare system becomes absolutely corrupted.

A corrupt system doesn’t consider patients as people, but rather as numbers.

It doesn’t consider life as sacred, but rather as expendable, with its value is determined by how useful you are to the State.

And it doesn’t view patient choice as something that should be made freely without undue pressure, coercion or manipulation. Rather, ‘choice’ becomes akin to a mugger pointing a gun at you, asking: “Your money or your life?”

Deal with PTSD or your life?

Suffer pain that we could otherwise treat or your life?

Live on the streets, homeless, or your life?

One can only speculate how a health system in a free society ends up like this.

Perhaps it begins with what society deems as more innocuous ‘choices’.

Take the jab or lose your job, for instance.

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Originally published at Nation First. Photo by RODNAE Productions.