A new documentary exposes the “dark side” of Canada’s federally funded euthanasia program MAiD (Medical Assistance in Dying) and its impact on families. The documentary, MAID: The Dark Side of Canadian Compassion, produced by Kian Simone and Sheila Gunn Reid of Rebel News premiered at a private venue in northeast Calgary Tuesday evening to a full room of about 200 people. MAiD under bill C-14 in 2016, mere months after Prime Minister Justin Trudeau entered office, initially had strict guidelines and safeguards to allow euthanasia to be implemented for people who have an irremediable illness and are expecting to die in the near future. However, from there the program began to evolve “under the guise of compassion." Over time, eligibility increased, waiting periods decreased, and safeguard systematically removed. “That all changed with the leadership of Justin Trudeau. MAiD quickly morphed into something else. Something evil,” the film's narrator Gunn Reid stated, asserting that under Trudeau’s MAiD program, Canadians are treated as “commodities.” Anyone who is seen as “inconvenient” to the government, such as the elderly, the sick, the mentally ill, the poor, are increasingly eligible for accessing state sanctioned euthanasia. MAiD has undergone “a transformation from a program initially meant to serve the terminally ill in their very last days to a checklist of lives deemed expendable by bureaucratic machinery,” narrates Gunn Reid in the documentary. “The acceleration of Canada into a culture of death was swift as it was systemic, with medical assisted deaths skyrocketing year after year after year.”The film briefly touches on the fact that MAiD recipients largely contribute to Canada's organ transplant industry. An investigation conducted by the Western Standard found Canada is a global frontrunner when it comes to the organ donation of euthanasia recipients. According to the American Journal of Transplantation, Canada leads its euthanasia counterparts in post-mortem transplants. The report, published in December 2022, was the first international review of the controversial practice.Canadian transplants from euthanized patients made up nearly half of all such procedures worldwide where the practice is legal, including Belgium, Spain, and the Netherlands. Meanwhile the Canadian Institute for Health Information states organs transplanted from people who choose euthinasia made up 6% of all transplants in 2021. The most recent data is from Quebec in 2022, which shows 14% of all transplants were from MAiD recipients, according to the Canadian Medical Association Journal. In 2018 it was 8%. The documentary film further explored the nuances between homicide, suicide and state approved euthanasia and shows how Canada’s legislation is “wider” than the Netherlands and Belgium and “lacks definition.”The Canadian Criminal code defines “euthanasia” as a “homicide,” but Trudeau’s bill C-14 forged an exception if a doctor signs off on it based on their “opinion.” Further, anyone who hints they might be suicidal will be examined for mental illness. However, someone who seeks state-sanctioned suicide through MAiD is not. Another major point the film raised is the mandatory corporation of hospices to offer MAiD to its terminally ill patients. The director of Delta Hospice Society explained how the BC facility, treated like a “Crown jewel by the government 10 years ago, now wants nothing to do with us.” In fact it’s worse than that, she said. Not only did the government pull its funding, but provincial institution Fraser Health evicted the 10-bed hospice for not complying with its MAiD mandate. Delta has moved to a secret, literally underground location to care for their patients apart from the overreaching arm of government bureaucrats requiring them to offer state suicide to their patients. Further topics covered in the film include Veterans Affairs (VA) offering MAiD to combat veterans in at least eight different cases officially (and at least 20 unofficially) and is evolving into a systematic issue where it’s becoming VA policy, Canada’s law that the doctor or nurse must lie on the person’s death certificate to state they died by whatever cause ailed them and not by euthanasia, as well as raise the question about what the MAiD recipient actually experiences at the time of death. It is known that the process can take a mere handful of minutes up to two hours, depending on how the patient’s body responds to the multi-step cocktail of drugs, including two different sedatives, one for the person to go unconscious, another one to decrease circulation to the heart, another drug to induce paralysis, and finally the lethal injection. Rebel, pointing out “MAiD is not deaths due to suffering, but lack of meaningful participation (in society and with family, friends),” argues state suicide is a “way to fix the broken health care system” and for “people in power (to) take no responsibility for anything.” A woman who works at St. Paul’s hospital in Vancouver offered some hope for people who has a family member or friend who could be in a position of seeking MAiD. “Show them you need them,” she said. Sometimes a person just needs to hear they are needed or wanted, and they immediately stop thinking about killing themselves. “Visit your neighbours.”The documentary is available on the Rebel website.
