Canada is killing the disenfranchised. Thank you for reading New World News, a collection of opinion pieces on current social issues from the New World Perspective. The New World Perspective comes out of my fiction. Although it’s fiction, it’s also a real-world view of our shared experience. Often, the NWPerspective is the alternative to what we are living with now.
The actual article which provoked this commentary can be found @: Quadriplegic Quebec man chooses assisted dying after 4-day ER stay leaves horrific bedsore.
A little background: In Canada, healthcare is a provincial responsibility. Provinces fund approximately 78% of their healthcare. The federal government provides the remaining amount. Legislation that permits Medical Assistance in Dying (MAID) is federal.
In this particular story, they left Normand Meunier, a quadriplegic, without the basic necessities needed to facilitate his hospital stay. They were the cause leading him to the decision to access MAID.
In the article, Trudo Lemmens, The Scholl Chair in Health Law and Policy at the University of Toronto, says, “Then the system responds by saying, ‘Well, you have access to medical assistance and dying.’”
“Medical assistance in dying is more easily available and on a more regular basis than some of the most basic care,” he adds. He says he is increasingly hearing stories of people who are struggling in the system and turn to MAID.
When we judge this story we should do it from the lens of our expectations of democracy. In a democracy, we citizens provide all the power to those who govern. We are the government. Our elected representatives should be a reflection of our beliefs. We should expect and accept nothing less from them.
As tragic as this particular incident is, a growing number of cases where people are choosing to die, rather than endure the ineptness of our provincial and federal governments. They are buying into institutional incompetence, rather than asking, ‘Where the hell are the basic support services I should expect from my democracy’? The right to live and die with dignity? When the world is becoming one of haves and have-nots, why am I accepting this slippery slope of exclusion; a place where if not now, I will someday surely find myself? There’s not a lot of room in the top 1%. That percentage is being galvanized because we’re buying into the story of exclusion and scarcity.
Let’s look at what the government has done for us lately. The government knew a pandemic was somewhere in our near future prior to the COVID-19 outbreak. They had been told. From the pandemic, we learned the supplies on hand were inadequate and outdated. Also, all supplies required for an emergency were outsourced, often from known potential enemies of democracy. Even our prescription medication, which we rely on to live from day to day, was outsourced. In addition, The Public Health Agency was unprepared for the pandemic, even though they knew one was coming
Contributing to our disenfranchisement is the doctor and nursing crisis in Canada we’re being asked to buy into. Once again government was aware beforehand that this crisis was coming. Not a threat. They knew it was coming. How prepared are we for the next pandemic if we can’t even address the day-to-day health needs of our public?
How far does the incompetence go? Last year the RCMP produced a report on shifts in domestic and international environments that could affect policing over the next five years. Once again, the report signals a disconnect between ‘the threat and the resources, capacity, capabilities, and political will to posture Canada,’ for what’s coming. Turns out, there’s a lot more to worry about than health care.
This is an interesting report. We face the effects of climate change, post-COVID-19, supply chain issues, war, global recession, social disenfranchisement, and technological shifts that will challenge policing.
Our government is inept when it comes to governing the welfare of the people and this extends through all departments. It’s become a lie, institutionalized, systemic, and accepted. It’s based on the idea of exclusion and scarcity. We buy into the idea that we don’t even have the resources to provide a basic life-saving mattress common in all medical facilities to a man who was not dying when he came for medical treatment.
The ineptness of our government has become institutionalized, but the solution has not. We can remove it with our vote. We can participate in our own governance. We need to ask questions and consider alternatives. Maybe we should be looking for something that breaks the two (3) party system, because neither one has ever attempted to change the institutionalized ineptness we have grown to accept. Several western nations have adopted the system of proportional representation. This system forces the electorate’s concerns upon elected representatives. Our voice would be heard.
Today’s assaults on the public run through not just Canada, but the Western and BRICS worlds. Rather than blind acceptance of a trajectory leading us to our own demise, we can look for the alternatives, and act upon them.