The Canadian blogger-priest Fr. Tom Dowd emails to lets us know of another important debate coming up in Canada’s Parliament on Monday. A private member’s bill proposes the legalization of assisted suicide and euthanasia throughout the country and amazingly there has been little buzz about it, either in the mass media or by the Catholic Church. He says that there was a public statement by the bishops’ conference about a month ago and a letter from the bishop of London, Ontario, but that’s about it.
Unless a stink can be raised loudly and quickly by many Canadians, the specter of assisted suicide and euthanasia looms all too real for Canada. All Canadian readers and bloggers—and bloggers with Canadian readers—should get in on this right away.
Funny—every time I debate socialized medicine (which ought to be a nightmare to anyone with a rare health condition), I bring up “assisted suicide” as a consequence of socialization. “That’s only in Oregon and Holland,” people say. “Look at Canada. They don’t have assisted suicide.”
Ha, ha.
Then my atheist brother-in-law went to Canada on business and came back proclaiming what a Utopia it is. He said I’d like it, because they accept disabled people more readily in Canadian society.
I said, “I don’t want to get thrown in jail for expressing my religious beliefs.”
He said, “Well, once you get past that, you’d love it.”
He mentioned in passing something about people having months-long waiting lists for open heart surgery, but whenever I pressed him on it, he changed the subject.
A friend of mine lives in Canada and is conservative on most issues except medical socialism. So while I was doijng my taxes last year, we compared numbers.
I took waht we paid (actually *earned*) in federal taxes, plus what we paid for health insurance and medical bills.
I told him our income, he translated it into Canadian, and figured out what we’d pay in taxes if we lived in Canada—just in federal income tax, not including the province income tax *and* province and federal sales tax.
Turns out that, even with our family’s huge medical bills, private insurance in the US saved us a couple thousand dollars over what we’d have paid just in taxes to live in Canada.
Oh, good grief – here we go again.
We’re still working to get rid of our recently misdefined marriage mess and they spring this on us (and no, it’s not in the Canadian media that I’ve noticed).
Today’s mail brought cards to distribute in church – from [url=http://www.VoteMarriage.ca]http://www.VoteMarriage.ca[/url] – encouraging parishioners to demand that our politicians define marriage as the union of one man and one woman.
Perhaps the idea is to have so many of these issues going at one time that they’ll just wear out all opposition.
Thanks Fr Dowd, and thanks, Dom, for bringing Canadians up to date on our own issues.
A small group of disability activists has tried to raise awareness about this bill, but the mainstream media doesn’t seem to care. Some photos, and excerpts from their stories, are posted under my September 26 entry, ‘I’m not dead yet’.(http://thirstyscribe.blogspot.com/2005_09_01_thirstyscribe_archive.html)
Which reminds me of a line in a recent article by Peggy Noonan:
“You say we don’t understand Africa? We don’t even understand Canada!”
With apologies to our neighbors to the north…:)