Based on the evidence, the so-called ‘evidence-based’ approach to drugs, crime, and state-sponsored suicide has been a disaster.
There’s something called “voting with your feet.” It’s the idea that people fleeing a country says something about that country that is even more profound than an election result.
Communist countries have long been an example of this, as despite their endless claims to be superior to capitalist nations, people sure seemed desperate to get out of communist countries and into capitalist ones.
And now, there appears to be an even more kind of “voting with your feet”:
Voting with your life.
Canadians have rapidly become among the most enthusiastic users of state-sponsored suicide in the world. For example, Canadians are making use of state-sponsored suicide at a rate 22 times higher than Americans (it’s legal in many American states).
Parts of Canada (B.C./Quebec) are already surpassing the most pro state-sponsored suicide countries in Europe – which is itself the most pro state-sponsored suicide part of the world.
In fact, Quebec is now number one per-capita in that regard on the entire planet, with 5.1% of deaths in Quebec being a result of state-sponsored suicide.
Disturbing surveys also show a significant number of Canadians wanting to extend state-sponsored suicide to individuals who are mentally ill, and even to the homeless:
“If a Canadian’s only affliction was “poverty,” 27 per cent said they would be fine with legalizing that person’s access to MAID. Another 28 per cent pegged “homelessness” as an appropriate bar to qualify for MAID.”
"If a Canadian’s only affliction was “poverty,” 27 per cent said they would be fine with legalizing that person’s access to MAID. Another 28 per cent pegged “homelessness” as an appropriate bar to qualify for MAID." pic.twitter.com/8uaS3HvoAa
— 🚨 Katherine Brodsky (@mysteriouskat) May 17, 2023
“I also found this particularly disturbing: “One of the more controversial aspects of MAID has been a number of high-profile cases in which Canadians with serious illnesses opted for death only after years of failing to obtain proper medical care.””
https://twitter.com/mysteriouskat/status/1658715450564546561
Opioid surge
Canada is also experiencing a massive surge of opioid deaths. As noted by The Lancet, things are so bad that massive numbers of deaths have become normalized:
“Since 2016, more than 30,000 people have died from opioid-related overdoses in Canada—more than from other, major accidental death causes combined.1,2 Opioid deaths have markedly slowed trends in life expectancy and triggered (provincial but not federal) states of public health emergency. More recently, related media headlines and political proclamations (“We will not rest and do everything needed …”) have largely disappeared. Yet those who read this muting as a sign of victory in the battle against the longstanding overdose death crisis are misguided. Per recent data, there were 3556 (rate: 19/100,000 population) opioid-related toxicity deaths in the first six months of 2022 – proportionally similar to the total number (7,993) and rate of opioid-related deaths in 2021.2 These indicators represent the highest annual tolls of opioid deaths since national Canadian statistics were established (2016); they reflect general patterns observed in the United States (US).3 After raging and taking—many young—lives at growing levels for more than a decade, the opioid-death crisis is very much alive in Canada; worse yet, it has become widely accepted as a part of everyday reality and therefore embraced as a kind of ‘new normal’.”
And the response by the Liberals? Give out more drugs using your tax dollars. They are increasingly pushing the ‘safe-supply’ idea, meaning your tax dollars will be used by the government to acquire and then distribute illegal drugs like heroin. It’s an idea that represents a continuation of the same supposedly ‘evidence-based’ policies that have only led to more and more deaths.
In Question Period, Liberal Carolyn Bennett went on a crazy rant after Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre criticized the Liberal ‘safe supply’ plan:
The death of the heroic
Ask yourself this:
When is the last time you heard a government official speak about the heroic potential in human beings?
About our ability to grow, adapt, overcome immense hardship, become stronger, achieve our goals, reshape the world around us?
We never hear this.
Instead, we hear about ‘victimization,’ about ‘oppressors,’ about the need for the government to be strong, implying that we are all weak.
It has made us into a society of low expectations. A society where we don’t believe an addict can become anything more than an addict, and where we instead just give them more drugs.
A society where we don’t believe people can overcome illness, mental struggles, or homelessness, and instead seek to help them die faster.
It’s profoundly sick. It’s profoundly anti-life.
A return of the heroic
We are trapped in a way of thinking that isn’t working.
By dismissing the heroic potential of human beings, by focusing on the lowest common denominator, we cut ourselves off from our true promise.
Thus, we must reconnect ourselves to the idea of humans as potentially heroic beings. We must believe that each person has the potential for greatness, and that greatness should be encouraged, not stifled.
Instead of incentivizing victimhood and death, we must incentivize heroism and life.
Spencer Fernando
Photo – YouTube
