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De Omnibus Dubitandum - Lux Veritas

Wednesday, May 20, 2020

The Montreal Nursing Homes Massacre

William Walter Kay BA LL B
 
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.
Four million Quebecers reside in Greater Montreal. Another 2 million reside within a 100-kilometre radius of Montreal. This combined area witnessed 90% of Quebec’s C-19 fatalities partly because this area hosts most of Quebec’s 2,600 long-term care facilities (“nursing homes”). Said facilities are mostly run by the provincial government.   
 

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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