Reportage on
Canadian euthanasia invariably highlights the pioneering role Quebec’s
euthanasia movement plays within the country.
In June 2014 Quebec’s Assembly became Canada’s first
legislature to legalize euthanasia. The Bill, introduced by the Parti Quebecois
then moved forward by Liberal Premier Couillard’s government, passed 94
to 22 with no abstentions.
The Act Respecting End of Life Care was the
fruit of years of labour by pressure groups like Quebec’s chapter of Dying with Dignity and the
600-member Quebec
Palliative Care Association (QCPA) whose General Manager also presides
over the Alliance of Palliative Care Homes. QCPA’s Manifesto extols citizens’ rights to a “good death” and to
professional counseling regarding end-of-life options.
On the eve of
the vote Quebec’s College of Physicians
endorsed euthanasia; something neither the Canadian Medical Association nor any
other provincial College had done.
Similarly, the Archdiocese of Quebec parted with the
many Canadian Catholic clerics who deny funeral sacraments to those who die via
euthanasia lest they endorse sinful suicide. Quebec’s euthanized are buried as
per normal; an approach the Archdiocese claims complies with Pope Francis’s
teachings.
Quebec’s
medically-assisted death squads waited for the green light from Quebec’s Court of Appeal then, between December
10, 2015 and March 31, 2019, either through medically-assisted death or
terminal sedation, they terminated 5,856 Quebecers’ lives. Around 4% of all Quebec deaths are now induced.
This percentage
is not high enough for some. At a November
29, 2019 presser Quebec Health Minister Danielle McCann, flanked by three
supportive opposition politicians, advocated comprehensive soliciting of
advanced consents from the elderly so that should these folk later lose
capacity to legally consent, they could be dispatched without much ado.
McCann went on
to comment on the status of a Quebec Superior Court ruling rejecting the
Criminal Code’s criterion that a patient’s “death
must be reasonably foreseeable” before euthanasia is permitted. Quebec
never appealed this ruling. (The matter is now in limbo with pundits expecting
Ottawa to delete this troublesome criterion mid-July.)
Thus, the
Covid-19 (C-19) response roadshow hit Montreal just as their euthanasia lobby
forged a momentous compact among judges, bishops, politicians and the regional
medical oligarchy. Of course, this euthanasia drive is not the sole key to
unlocking Quebec’s peculiar C-19 response; but it must be held in mind; …and
what a peculiar response Quebec’s has been!
- Quebec’s 8.5 million residents constitute 22.6% of Canada’s population (37.6 million).
- Quebec’s 3,483 C-19 fatalities constitute 62.5% of the Canadian total (5,595).
- Ontario, population 14.6 million, reports 1,858 C-19 deaths.
- The rest of Canada (pop 14.5 million) reports 345 deaths.
- In terms of C-19 deaths-per-million citizens: Quebec registers 409; Ontario registers 127; and the rest of Canada: 24.
Officially, 75% (2,601) of Quebec’s C-19 fatalities occurred inside nursing homes. There is clear evidence of under-counting of nursing home fatalities. Nursing home plus geriatric ward fatalities exceed 90% of all fatalities.
Official figures
do transpose nicely upon reported ages
of C-19 fatalities. Almost 40% of fatalities were aged 80 to 90. A third
were over 90.
Quebec reported
its first C-19 death on March 18. Six of Quebec’s first 9 fatalities happened
in nursing homes. By March 27 nursing homes were obvious biohazards.
On April 1
officials revealed that 519 nursing homes harboured at least one C-19 case.
On April 8 news
broke that 115 of 250 residents of a Laval nursing home were C-19 positive.
Thirteen residents there had perished.
On April 10
ambulance crews discovered residents malnourished, dehydrated and covered with
feces at Dorval’s Residence
Herron. Crews found corpses Herron’s staff were unaware of. A dispute erupted
between provincial health officials and the ambulance service over how many
body-bags had been dragged from Herron and over how many of those bags
contained C-19 fatalities. Herron, which averages 4 deaths per month, had 31
deaths in 14 days. One hundred-fifty residents and staff tested positive.
On April 13
authorities noted a government-run home in Lasalle had 26 C-19 fatalities and
351 cases.
At an April
14 presser Quebec’s Director of Public Health stated that he had originally
operated on the assumption that asymptomatic C-19 carriers were not contagious.
This derriere covering arrived just as news outlets dropped bombs like:
“…as in Italy and Spain, Quebec focussed on freeing up hospital and ICU capacity, and in some cases preventatively transferred seniors out of hospitals into care facilities. At the same time, it established recommendations to those care facilities restricting the transfer of residents back to hospitals should they fall ill. The result has been a humanitarian disaster of still undetermined proportions…”
Health
authorities knew intimately where they were sending and confining these
patients. Problems at Quebec nursing homes have been studied ad nauseam. Many
homes have crowded communal dining rooms and narrow hallways. Many have
wards with multiple beds per room and shared toilets. Most have residents
incapable of following elementary hygiene protocols meandering about the
building. Staff
often work at more than one home and continued to do so during the pandemic.
Also amidst the
pandemic, nursing home staff earning little more than minimum wage were
expected to buy
their own personal protective gear. By April’s end thousands of nursing
home staff had contracted C-19 or had walked off the job. One home had 2 staff
attending to 60 bedridden patients.
On April 30 the
government reported 6,603 C-19 cases among nursing home residents.
Quebec’s elderly
C-19 sufferers were sent to and/or confined in circumstances approaching the
opposite of quarantine. The contagious were not isolated and well-tended. They
were herded into cloistered proximity with the most vulnerable, then
abandoned.
Quebec has 9,280
C-19 cases aged over 70. Quebec is only treating 1,763 C-19 sufferers in
hospital (many of whom caught C-19 whilst in geriatric wards). Hence, thousands
of C-19 patients continue to languish inside bio chambers alongside tens of
thousands of elderly neighbors.
A
wise man once opined: never presume there is a conspiracy behind any disaster
that sheer stupidity or mere incompetence might explain.
That
said: are we to be blind to the fact that the demographic cohort which the euthanasia
boosters have long sought to snuff-out is the same cohort now being
extinguished by C-19?
Beyond the
gormless promises and thespian commiserations proffered by Legault’s team one
espies a shadow party of Montreal-area politico-medical elites who during the
years immediately preceding the pandemic obsessively clamoured for the social
licence and legal permission to exterminate the precise people who are now
dropping like flies under their watch.
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