How will history write this age of tumult?

We live in an age of upheaval and uncertainty. How will it end? What was the start?

^{image: Newmarket Today}

Did our current epoch start with the havoc of c and hoarding; hatred of tough health measures such a vaccines; the spread of misinformation?

Was it the Russian invasion of Ukraine; Israel’s war in Gaza and the threat of conflict spreading like wildfire? Crazy things like former president Trump inviting Russia to invade countries that don’t pay their fair share of NATO defences?

The invasion of homeless: the lives of a generation wasted; the divided sympathy of their plight; the strain of living rough adding a further strain on our health care system already stretched thin to the point of tearing?

Or the deadly drugs that are killing thousands: unregulated drugs concocted by armatures with fatal results; the plight of the homeless made worse in an attempt to make their dismal lives tolerable?

The widening gap between the rich and poor: those owning homes becoming real estate millionaires while those working at menial low-wage jobs who can’t even afford rent, let alone buy a house?

Unnerving weather caused by climate change: drought and flooding; the lack of water is reducing the capacity of hydro electricity dams; the increasing cost of food; stressed fish in low rivers; dried forests going up in smoke?

How will this era conclude? It’s hard to tell when you’re living inside an era. How the age began and ends is only clear in hindsight.

The Great Depression began in August 1929, when the economic expansion of the Roaring Twenties came to an abrupt end.

Poverty and drought sent young men in search of the next meal.

I find parallels between now and the dirty thirties when my dad, before I was born, ended up in a make-work project building Jasper National Park. It was there that he met my mom who was vacationing there.

The homeless camps that I see along Kamloops’ riverbanks are reminiscent of the dirty thirties.

Ruth Balf provides a graphic view of Kamloops during the depression in her book: Kamloops 1914 – 1945. Because Kamloops was at the junction of two railways, thousands of homeless young men drifted through the city.

Evocative of our current earnest mayor, Hamer-Jackson,  C.T Dierks of the Free Methodist Society reached out to the homeless drifters. Unlike the current mayor, Dierks worked with Kamloops city council to secure funding for the Ebenezer Mission that housed fifteen to thirty men a night and gave out a total of 2500 meals.

By 1933, the Province established work camps throughout B.C. Men had to register for the relief program and 750 men registered in Kamloops for work camps -no Orientals were permitted.

The camps, referred to as “hobo jungles,” were set up along the North Thompson. Citizens complained that the men were all degenerates and would not work if they had the chance.

The era ended with World War II when the government stimulated the economy with large expenditures in war.

How will this chapter of history end? In World War III?  In the mass construction of homes? Dramatic expenditures in restoring the middle class?

Axe the subsidies to Big Oil

Canadians may be outraged at the carbon tax/rebate but give little thought to the subsidies they give Big Oil. The corporate fat cats would rather keep quiet your gift to them.

^{image: Council of Canadians}

These subsidies cost Canadian taxpayers $6.03 billion. That’s about $214 per taxpayer every year.

And unlike the federal carbon tax, Canadians don’t get a rebate on subsidies.

Most middle and low income Canadians actually make money on the carbon tax/rebate. According to data from Statistics Canada, 94 per cent of households with incomes below $50,000 receive rebates greater than the carbon tax they pay.

Big Oil makes lots of money, so why do we have to subsidize them?

British Columbia, Alberta and Saskatchewan give more than $2.5 billion in royalty reductions and tax exemptions to the fossil fuel industry every year.

The glib leader of the Conservative Party, Pierre Poilievre knows a populists slogan when he hears it. He wants to “axe the tax.” It’s a catchy phrase that rhymes, and appeals to fossil fuel consumers who don’t understand how the carbon tax/rebate works.

The carbon tax/rebate works to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in a way that conservatives should applaud. If you want to sell something that is wreaking havoc with the planet, increase the price. If you want to sell something relatively benign and you have plenty of it, lower the price.

It’s the genius of the “invisible hand” of the marketplace, as the father of modern economics Adam Smith would but it.

Think about other rebate scenarios. When the last time you paid more for groceries and the grocer gave you back the increased cost?

Poilievre, a skilled career politician, knows ignorance when he sees it. He promises something he can’t deliver if he becomes prime minister.

He knows that the federal carbon tax is only being applied in Saskatchewan, Manitoba, Ontario and New Brunswick.

Sure, the price of carbon will increase in other provinces but only because those provinces agree with the feds that carbon pricing is the most effective way of saving us from the disaster of climate change.

If Poilievre gets in power, he’ll shrug and say: “oh well, I know I promised to axe the carbon tax but I didn’t realize that the feds only apply the tax to four provinces. It’s the fault of the provinces.”

B.C. can take some pride in being first in North America to understand the dynamics of the carbon marketplace.

Under a right-of-centre government, the BC Liberals put a carbon tax in place in 2008 on fossil fuels burned for transportation, home heating, and electricity. They reduced personal and corporate income taxes by an amount roughly equal to the tax.

Then in Ontario, the pre-Doug Ford PC Party was all for a revenue-neutral carbon tax.

In 2014, Preston Manning, the godfather of Canada’s modern conservative movement, came out in favour of carbon taxes.

Poilievre would rather we forget that carbon pricing is a worthy conservative idea.

If he were honest, Poilievre would return to conservative roots and forget about the populist chatter borrowed from south of the border.

Dread of drought and the psychology of water shortage

I worry about the drought.

I never used to think much about snowpacks. The reported snowpack levels were about as interesting as the price of pork bellies.

Now I nervously read the news. A map of snowpack levels released by B.C.’s River Forecast Centre in January is coloured brown, brown, brown.

^{image: Global News}

The province, overall, is only at 66 per cent of normal.

As of March 1, the North Thompson was at 76 per cent of normal and the South Thompson at 90 per cent.

Those levels might be better than average but Kamloopsians have no reason to breathe a collective sigh of relief.

Remember last year when snowpack levels were about the same? That didn’t prevent disastrously low river levels. Warm spring temperatures caused the precious snowpacks to melt all at once. The whole wad of water was shot in weeks, leaving us hot and dry for the summer.

That summer, drought levels for the North and South Thompson basins were at 4 and 5, respectively, for 105 days between June and November.

It was like an extravagant party in which I spend my  money on lots of food and drink. Afterwards, my food and money are gone with little left but I had fun.

I think of the snowpacks, high above the river valley, as reservoirs of water waiting to release their precious load; to fill the rivers with drinking water for us, for fish to swim in, for dams to fill for generating electricity, for crop irrigation.

The shortage of water leaves me anxious and the psychology of water scarcity is different than our reaction to scarcity of other resources such as food or money

“The human brain is sensitive to scarcity,” say behavioural analysts Thomas Talhelm of the University of Chicago and Hamidreza Harati of the University of Queensland Business School in Australia.

“The lack of something we consider vital, such as time or food, can powerfully shape our thinking and behaviour. Take money, for example: when people play a game that makes some players abruptly wealthier or poorer, those who lose money start making decisions that result in their being better off now but worse off later,” say Talhelm and Harati (Scientific American, December, 2023).

In studies of people around the world, they found that those in places where water is scarce people think more about the long term. Even in a lab setting the results are similar. When confronted with water scarcity, people focussed on the future. Worrying about water shortages prompted better planning and less wasteful behaviour —not only with water but with other resources too.

Water has a special place in our thinking. No wonder, since we can go without food for weeks but without water for only a few days.

“Across studies,” add Talhelm and Harati, “our findings suggest that water has a meaningful place in our thinking—one that’s distinct from other important resources, including wealth. In fact, humans may have evolved to be keenly sensitive to water access because it’s so critical to us. Humans managed without money for many thousands of years.”

Everyone wants to be Indigenous

Non-Indigenous Canadians want to claim Indigenous status for a number of reasons. One of them is to provide a defence in court they wouldn’t otherwise have, and another is to secure government grants.

A B.C. judge warns of what he calls a “tsunami” of fraudulent Indigenous claims coming to Canadian courts.

^{David Yeo. image: Press Progess}

Provincial Court Judge David Patterson says that non-Indigenous people want access to benefits available to Indigenous people.

This is especially true of Metis, who are part of the trio of those that courts consider to be Indigenous. The other two being Inuit and First Nations peoples.

In his comments, Judge Patterson was ruling on a case before him involving pastor Nathan Allen Joseph Legault who claimed to be Metis. Judge Patterson ruled that:

“While the Metis as a people have been recognized by the Canadian government as separate from the Inuit and First Nations peoples, the definition of Metis, and thus who is and who is not Metis remains a source of often contention.”

Legault wanted to be recognized as Metis so he could argue that he had suffered discrimination, physical abuse, separation from his culture or family, or drug and alcohol abuse.

Those factors are exclusive to Indigenous people under a previous court ruling called Gladue. That ruling says that courts must consider an Indigenous offender’s background when he or she is being sentenced for a crime.

However, Judge Patterson found that Legault provided inadequate claims to Métis status based on “family lore” that his great-great grandmother was Indigenous.

Another reason why Non-Indigenous Canadians want to claim Indigenous status is because they can access funding provided by government programs.

This case involves the unfolding story around the ArriveCan app.

Funding for the ArriveCan app is turning out to be a tortured labyrinth of shady deals.

It turns out that an ArriveCan contractor used a federal program aimed at supporting Indigenous businesses. An audit is being done to reveal if money from the program actually went to Indigenous people.

The ArriveCan contractor, called Dalian Entreprises, describes itself as an aboriginally owned company. Under the federal Indigenous program, Dalian was awarded a $ 21.2- million contract in 2019 for “informatics professional services.”

The claim that Dalian is an aboriginally owned company is in doubt.

David Yeo, founder of Dalian, says he is Indigenous but does not have status because of the second-generation cut-off rule in the Indian Act.

That rule prevents some First Nations people with status under the Indian Act from passing on their status to successive generations when their partners are not status Indians.

Dalian is being investigated to see whether they followed the rule which requires that at least 33 per cent of the total  work is performed by the Indigenous contractor or subcontractors.

Indigenous organizations are crying foul. They have raised concerns that these types of arrangements can promote “phantom joint ventures.” That’s where an Indigenous partner is used as a front man by a nonIndigenous business to obtain a contract.

We’ll see. Indigenous Services Canada is conducting an audit of Dalian.

Unfortunately, the Indigenous people of Canada are being victimised again by the pretenders who steal their identity.

Short naps have long benefits

I confess that I have a daily nap. 

I admit that reluctantly because sleeping midday has a bad reputation. In our culture, it indicates sloth and indolence.

^{Dreamer by David Charbonneau}

Siestas are common throughout the Mediterranean, Southern Europe, the Middle East, mainland China, the Indian subcontinent, And as a result of Spanish influence, most of Latin America and the Philippines.

But not in North America, Mexico excepted. 

Our puritanical roots and the Protestant Work Ethic emphasise  diligence, discipline, frugality and not giving in to our body rhythms.

The US government issued a statement in 2019 reinforcing a long held policy: 

“GSA is issuing this bulletin to reaffirm the fact that all persons are prohibited from sleeping in federal buildings, except when such activity is expressly authorised by an agency official.”  

It’s only natural to feel drowsy in the afternoon as our body temperature drops briefly due to a change in our circadian rhythms.

To an observer, sleeping and napping may look like the same thing. They are not.

In an analysis of napping done in 2022, researchers at the Center for Sleep and Cognition at the National University of Singapore found significant improvements in certain kinds of memory, information-processing speed and vigilance (the ability to respond to an unexpected event, say, a swerving car).

After a short nap, I wake up refreshed.  Beyond the cognitive benefits, a  nap  simply makes you  feel better. “No one talks about mood enough,” says researcher Michael Chee. Tired people tend to be grumpy people.

When napping, I’m sometimes not even aware that I actually dozed off. A clue is that I become aware that I’ve been dreaming -more of a microdream than a full-fledged one.

Practitioners of Transcendental Meditation may disagree, but the brief dip into the unconscious is similar to the one I achieve with TM. When napping, I sometimes use the mantra that I learned from TM.

The effect of napping is quite different than sleeping. While a short nap of 20 to 30 minutes is refreshing, falling asleep leaves you groggy. 

Longer sleep times can place you into deeper sleep and result in “sleep inertia,” that fuzzy-headed  feeling on waking. Even if the grogginess passes quickly, many people find it unpleasant.

However, Sometimes falling asleep, instead of napping, is an indication of an underlying condition.

Sleeping in the day can be associated with health problems. Physiologist Marta Garaulet of the University of Murcia in Spain studied 3,000 otherwise healthy Europeans. Garaulet and her colleagues found that those who slept for more than 30 minutes were 23 percent more likely to be obese than those who didn’t lie down at all.

Sleepers were also more likely to have a combination of high blood pressure, high cholesterol, and other health issues. In addition, sleeping reduced their ability to lose fat on a diet.

My analogy may  not be perfect but I argue that since we don’t eat just once a day, why would we sleep just once a day?

Come-on, everyone, let’s nap. With all the vitriol seething in the land, we could use fewer grumpy people.

Will Trudeau the younger go for a walk in the snow?

Forty years ago, Justin’s father took a walk in the snow. He returned home and sat in his sauna for an hour and a half pondering his future. He went to his office the next morning, a rose in his lapel as always, and wrote a note to the Liberal party president saying he was resigning as party leader and prime minister.

^{image: iStock}

One difference between the father and the son is that Pierre faced a revolt within. Members of his caucus openly called for his resignation. Justin has managed to hold his caucus together -perhaps because of his skills as a teacher managing a classroom of rowdy students?

The word “woke” wasn’t in common use back then but the label, in a positive sense, could have applied to Trudeau the elder.

In a massive bill from Pierre’s government,  homosexuality was partially decriminalized and  abortion allowed under certain conditions. A related bill decriminalized the sale of contraceptives, regulated lotteries, and tightened the rules for gun possession.

Pierre Trudeau famously defended the bill by telling reporters that “there’s no place for the state in the bedrooms of the nation,” adding that “what’s done in private between adults doesn’t concern the Criminal Code.”,

Woke, which originally meant being socially and politically conscious of injustices, is now used by opposition leader Pierre Poilievre to attack Justin Trudeau. No one is exactly sure what the pejorative meaning is, but when it’s delivered with a sneer it doesn’t sound good.

I thought one of Justin Trudeau’s boldest acts was to legalize cannabis. Canada is the first G7 country to do so. Since then, with the prodding of the NDP, his government has introduced a public dental plan and pharmacare. Child-care agreements with the provinces will see fees decrease to $10 a day by 2026.

Much of the glow has gone off Justin’s panache. International press was initially smitten by Justin. The starry-eyed New York Times swooned, praising the Trudeau government as “emerging as a moral leader of the free world”.

Now young voters are leaning towards the Conservatives. In a recent Abacus poll among voters 29 and younger, the Tories are ahead of the Liberals 36 per cent to 21 per cent. 

Pierre Poilievre, the pesky Pekingese yapping at the heels of Justin, is barking up the right tree in the failure of affordable housing. Young people have done the right thing, gone to college and university, played by the rules of the COVID pandemic, only to find themselves sleeping in their parents’ basements.

With Justin’s popularity fading, the only thing that night save a  progressive government in the next election is the leader of the federal NDP, Jagmeet Singh. 

Progressive voters have a choice between Justin and Jagmeet. In a recent poll, 73 per cent of Liberal supporters would choose Singh while 27 per cent  would choose Poilievre. The results for Bloc Québécois supporters are similar with 60 per cent favouring Singh while 40 per cent side with Poilievre.

Trudeau the younger will probably not take a walk in the snow and will form the next government with diminished MPs and the support of the NDP.

Cannabis is not harmless. We never said it was

When we formed the Calgary chapter of the Alberta Legalization of Cannabis Committee (ALCC) in 1977, we made sure that we didn’t claim it was harmless.

^{ALCC frisbee. image: David Charbonneau.}

It would be foolish to claim otherwise. Inhaling smoke can’t be good for you.

But our lobby group argued that the risks of cannabis use were less than the risks of arrest and incarceration for its possession. 

The irony of tobacco being legal while cannabis, being apparently less harmful yet criminal, was not lost on us. We joked: “They’re waiting to show that cannabis causes cancer before it’s legalized.”

As a side effect of the eradication of cannabis crops in Mexico, pot was made harmful. The Department for Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) in the U.S. sprayed cannabis fields in with the dangerous herbicide paraquat.

We decided to make kits to test for paraquat. A chemist told me of chemicals that could be used for the test.

I was surprised how easy it was to buy sodium dithionite and sodium bicarbonate.  We met at my house and made the test kits. The small plastic stir spoons from McDonald’s were perfect for measuring the chemicals. Kits were sold in local retail outlets for $1.50 –each good for two tests.

Politicians of the day were in a quandary. They understood how unfair criminalization was but their hands were tied by public opinion. In response to our letter sent in 1978, Prime Minister P.E. Trudeau said, in part: 

“At present three departments, Justice, the Solicitor General, and National Health and Welfare, are reviewing the provisions of Bill S-19. They’re working to make certain the legislation we introduce strikes a proper balance between concerns over the potential health risks associated with cannabis and concerns over the personal and social effects of penal laws aimed at discouraging its use.” 

In the minds of politicians, the political risks were greater than the arrests and incarceration for users. Any support of legalization was lip service -cannabis users were unfortunate collateral damage.  

One risk we didn’t have to deal with back then was the potency of the pot available. BC Bud was legendary but nothing I used was close to the potency of today. The “ditch weed” that I grew in my closet under fluorescent lights was absurdly low in THC. 

 Now, commercial cannabis has THC levels over 20 per cent.

Researcher Dr, Daniel Myron from the Ottawa Hospital Research Institute has found that the effects of cannabis use, especially young men, is greater than we could have anticipated back then: 

“My research team recently conducted two large Canadian studies examining the relationship between cannabis use and mental health. Our findings are that cannabis use may be implicated in the development of certain types of mental illness. In the first study, we found that 26 per cent of individuals visiting the emergency department (ED) for an episode of cannabis-induced psychosis developed schizophrenia within three years – a rate 242 times higher than the general population (Globe and Mail, Feb 22, 2024).”

I regret that anyone thinks cannabis is innocuous. Like any drug, including alcohol and tobacco, there are risks. As in the case of tobacco use, education is the key to awareness of those risks; not criminalization.

You can find  the archives of ALLC at alccblog.wordpress.com.

Fluoridation could save our public dental plan billions

Now that we are all paying for a national dental plan, it would be a good idea to reduce costs by fluoridating more of Canadian  water supplies.

^{image: Canada.ca}

The cost of the public dental plan is $13 billion.

Except for a deluded few who like to quote dubious internet cranks, the benefits of fluoridation are well recognized. 

Fluoridation is recommended by the Canadian and American Dental Associations, Canada’s Chief Dental Officer and the World Health Organization. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have called fluoridation one of the 10 great public health achievements of the 20th century.

Only one-third of Canadians have fluoridated water supplies, so there’s lots of room for savings. Twenty-five million Canadians have poorer dental health because of lack of fluoridation. 

According to Professors Juliet Guichon and Ian Mitchell of the Cumming School of Medicine at the University of Calgary: “Fluoridation reduces dental decay by approximately 25 per cent  (Globe and Mail, 8 Jan 2024).”

I estimate that if two-thirds of Canadians have  dental decay reduced by 25 per cent, that’s a potential savings of $2 billion.

Ottawa, Toronto, Halifax, Winnipeg and Edmonton, are just some of the cities that have fluoridated water. Too bad that Kamloops is not one of those cities.

One of the things that prompted me to move to Kamloops was its fluoridated water. It proved to be a good idea -my son had excellent dental health.

Then, in 2001, a referendum was held in Kamloops on whether to have water metres installed and fluoridation removed.

To bundle the two questions on one ballot was a bad idea. Cranky Kamloopsians thought that if water meters were a bad idea, so was fluoridation. They were wrong on both counts.

Kamloopsians bought into misinformation being promoted at the time that mining companies were dumping their pollution in our water. Like all the worst misinformation, there is an element of truth. Fluorides are the byproduct of mining and that product can be sold and added to water.

But to claim that mining companies are dumping fluorides would be like saying that iodine is being dumped into our salt by mining companies.

A lot of iodine is produced by a brine-mining company in Oklahoma, one of the largest in the world.

No one doubts the benefits of iodine which prevents iodine deficiency that  affects about two billion people globally.  It’s the leading preventable cause of intellectual and developmental disabilities.

In Mexico, fluorides are added to salt. Mexicans receive the benefits of fluoridation without it being added to water supplies. 

Kamloops’ objectors to fluoridation failed to mention that the greatest source of fluorides is mother nature. Kamloops water is naturally fluoridated to 0.5 parts per million. Only 0.2 ppm would have to be added to make the water effective in improving dental health. 

Calgarians fell for similar misinformation and removed fluoridation in 2011. Professors Guichon and Mitchell noted that after that, dental health declined: 

“The children are all in need of dental surgery requiring general anaesthetic, a need that grew dramatically after water fluoridation ended in Calgary in 2011, as did the need for urgent intravenous-antibiotic therapy for treating infections originating in a tooth.” 

Flourides would improve dental health but in this age of misinformation, propaganda tops health and savings.

Freedom convoyers have replaced hippies as protestors

 It used to be that hippies took to the streets with grievances. Now it’s freedom convoyers.

The nature of hippies’ complaints were easy to identify. Freedom convoyers not so much.

^{image: Magnum Photos. Washington DC. 1967. An American young girl, Jan Rose KASMIR, confronts the American National Guard outside the Pentagon during the 1967 anti-Vietnam march. This march helped to turn public opinion against the US war in Vietnam.}

The Conservative establishment had no trouble making fun of the hippies with their flowers and beads.

Al Capp, creator of the cartoon strip Li’l Abner, had little sympathy for student protesters. His strip ran for 43 years until 1977. He didn’t hide his disdain for protesters. One panel of the strip featured slovenly protestors carrying signs that read: Students Wildly Indignant about Nearly Everything (SWINE). 

Capp never missed an occasion to ridicule what he perceived as the loutish loafers. In the ’60s, he had a famous confrontation with John Lennon and Yoko Ono, where he introduced himself as “that dreadful Neanderthal fascist.” 

As for me, I thought that hippies had legitimate concerns. In the 1960s, they protested against social injustice, poverty, the unfair treatment of African American citizens, lack of freedom of speech, corporate corruption and the Vietnam War.

Now it’s progressives that find freedom convoyers to be  out-of-touch with reality. The source of grievances can often be found in QAnon with fabricated claims.

In Kamloops, they show up on the highway with large Canadian flags with  imported American sensibilities of allegiance to the flag. They are the ones who seem wildly indignant. 

It’s hard to pin a label on them. 

I use “freedom convoyers” because they usually demonstrate against perceived threats to their freedom not to be vaccinated and the support of convoys to overthrow governments if necessary.

Most recently, freedom convoyers protested the screening of a documentary about the career of provincial health officer Dr. Bonnie Henry. 

Dr. Bonnie Henry has been a target of freedom convoyers for her defence of public health, including mandated vaccinations. In the warped minds of freedom convoyers, the right to spread disease trumps public health.

The organiser of the film in Victoria began to get nervous when she heard that freedom convoyers were coming from Vancouver and it looked like trouble.

“We’d been getting some emails, trying to educate us,” said festival director Kathy Kay. “And I guess about 2 or 3 p.m. Thursday, we got a call from somebody who said there were 30 people coming over from Vancouver. That’s when we thought something was going to happen.”

The director’s suspicions were confirmed when about 50 demonstrators slowed up and tried to block the entrance. A line of police ­officers guarded the Theatre entrance. At the end of the film, volunteers and the audience were escorted from the theatre by police as protesters heckled film-goers as they left the building.

While freedom convoyers support conservative causes, Conservatives shy away from supporting them because of their wild support of disinformation. 

I wonder how a latter day Al Capp would label them?

I imagine a cartoon with a ragged bunch of freedom conyovers, frothing at the mouth, carrying signs that read: Freedom Ragers Always Undermined by Disinformation (FRAUD). 

Liberals lack spine in failure to provide MAID to mentally ill

Behind in the polls, the federal Liberals have delayed access of MAID to those suffering from  mental illness again. After three years of delay, the feds are bowing to pressure to delay medical assistance in dying for those with prolonged, incurable mental disorders.

^{image: The Sandbox Project}

It’s only a pause, they say, until after the next election. That delay could be a recipe for cancellation. A government led by Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre would scrap any law allowing MAID for mental illness.

After the original delay, MAID provisions for individuals with mental illnesses were supposed to kick in back in March, 2023 but that was delayed a year. Now, they’re  delayed again. 

In a seizure of procrastination, the Liberals reconvened a special joint committee of MPs and senators to “study” the problem and suggest a path for the planned expansion.

The committee released a report on Monday saying Canada is not ready for such an expansion of MAID. Apparently they thought that mentally ill sufferers could suffer a little longer while those with a “physical” illness would have access to MAID. 

Three members of the special committee disagreed. Senator Pamela Wallin said she finds it “shocking” that on this particular issue, the government no longer subscribes to “the notion of choice and how important it is,” which leads her to believe there has been an “about-face” on the part of Ottawa.

It’s intolerable that access to MAID for mentally-ill sufferers has become political. 

What if other diseases such as Chronic kidney disease were politicised?  CKD is a major health problem affecting approximately 4 million Canadians.

What if the committee decided that CKD was the result of “lifestyle” choices of sufferers and that only certain people were deserving of MAID? Would they then set up a committee to study whether the undeserving should be allowed to die in peace? 

That would be unacceptable. Yet, the gatekeepers of our healthcare system are willing to make those suffering from intolerable mental illness consider options such as suicide. 

The heart of the problem is the supposed difference between mental and physical illness. 

There is none.

The confusion between the mind and body is millennia old.  When those who suffered from schizophrenia heard voices, they were thought to be coming from a spiritual world; from devils and gods.

Centuries ago, the philosopher René Descartes cemented the myth of the separation of mind and body. It’s still popular.  We can’t get over the idea that our mental lives are separate from our physical lives.

Mental illness is physical illness because the mind is a product of the brain. Neuroscientists are mapping the connection -how parts of the brain operate to generate thoughts and other mental qualities such as consciousness.  

Health providers across Canada say they are not ready to deal with requests for MAID. But if, after three years, they are not ready, then when? With our healthcare system stretched to the limit, will they ever be ready? 

Terminal “mental-illness” sufferers need the support of clinicians who would allow MAID that is now offered for other physical sufferers.