Monday, March 25, 2024

Truth, lies, love and hate

It's Holy Week. The week before Jesus is crucified and dies to save man from his sins. 

“Pilate asked him, ‘So you are a king?’ Jesus answered, ‘You say that I am a king. For this I was born, and for this I came into the world, to testify to the truth. Everyone who belongs to the truth listens to my voice.’” — John 18:37

"What is truth?” retorted Pilate. 

I've been thinking about truth. And I've been thinking about lies. I've been thinking about love. And I've been thinking about hate. Do we build up? Or do we tear down?

Joyce Arthur of the Abortion Rights Coalition, spends a lot of time writing letters and petitions to politicians, accusing other groups of hate. 

In just one ATIP, ARCC's letters (and ARCC's followers' comments) to the Finance department use the word 'hate' 47 times when speaking about these other groups. Arthur alleges that these groups are 'hate groups', and therefore should have their Canada Emergency Wage Subsidy (CEWS) funding revoked. That's a lot of pages of very serious allegations against groups who support the sanctity of life.

What is truth? A very important question indeed.

Thursday, March 21, 2024

Access to Information is broken in Canada

To: Pierre Poilievre

CC: Justin Trudeau, Jagmeet Singh, Mona Fortier

Dear Pierre Poilievre,

Along with the dozens and dozens of things you will need to fix once you become Prime Minister, I have one more item to add to your list. Please fix the Access to Information Act. It is a disaster. I know this, because I use it a lot. 

Broken item number 1: You can wait months and months and months for a reply to your access to information. As an example I have two outstanding requests with the department of Finance: One has been outstanding since June 2023 (that's nine months). I was recently told to "expect that we will be able to reply within the next 2 to 4 months" more. Another had been outstanding since May 2023 (10 months) and I finally only received it this week. Whatever happened to that 30 day promise of response?

I could give you more examples, but you get the picture. 

Broken item number 2: When they don't want to give you any information at all, they will actually say they do not confirm or deny the existence of records relevant to your request. I am not kidding: 

"In accordance with 10(2) of the Act (The head of a government institution may but is not required to indicate under subsection (1) whether a record exists.), the Canada Revenue Agency does not confirm or deny the existence of records relevant to your request. If such records did exist, they would qualify for exemption under subsection 24(1) of the Act, which permits the head of a government institution to refuse to disclose information. For details on the provisions cited, go to laws-lois.justice.gc.ca/eng/acts/a-1(24 (1) The head of a government institution shall refuse to disclose any record requested under this Part that contains information the disclosure of which is restricted by or pursuant to any provision set out in Schedule II"
 
Broken item number 3: Pages come back in PDF format. But the bureaucrats have decided to stymie us even more; sneaky so-and so's. What they do is, take the original text and save it as a JPEG then put it back into PDF format and send it to you. This means that you cannot search the text. In the past, you would receive the PDF in a searchable format. This is a purely vindictive measure.

Broken item number 4: Sure, you can complain to the Office of the Information Commissioner. But this doesn't help because it takes them forever to respond; even longer than the original ATIP you're complaining about. I have one complaint at the OIC that I've been waiting 21 months for. As far as I know it hasn't even been assigned to an investigator yet. Departments know this, so can just take their sweet time in responding.

Justin Trudeau wants to control every aspect of a citizen's life. The only tool we have, to in any way, make this government accountable, is access to information. But just like everything else in this country, under this government, under this prime minister, it is broken.

Please, please, please Pierre Poilievre, fix it.

Thank you.

Sincerely,
Patricia Maloney

Wednesday, March 6, 2024

RCMP must finally investigate born-alive abortions

Campaign Life Coalition is asking for the RCMP to open up an investigation into the tragedy of abortions that result in the live birth of a child. These children are born alive and left to die.

'Data from Statistics Canada and from the Canadian Institute for Health Information, a government-controlled reporting body, show that abortion attempts were made against the lives of these babies in regulated Canadian medical facilities. The data shows that these babies survived these assaults, that they were born alive, and then they died'


MP Maurice Vellacott also asked the RCMP look into this in 2013. At the time Commissioner Bob Paulson refused to investigate these deaths; it seems he allowed his pro-abortion ideaology to get in the way of impartiality:
"Your assertion that some, any or all of these occurrences constitute a crime requires an untenable contortion of the Criminal Code far removed from the legal consequences of the Morgentaler decision and the reality of a quarter century of deliberate Parliamentary inaction.'
Hopefully Commissioner Mike Duheme will do the right thing and finally investigate these horrific deaths.

Monday, February 12, 2024

Canadian government unable to justify its persecution of pro-life charities

My ATIP to the Privy Council Office (PCO):

“Regarding this letter from the PMO to the Finance Department https://www.pm.gc.ca/en/mandate-letters/2021/12/16/deputy-prime-minister-and-minister-finance-mandate-letter which says: "Introduce amendments to the Income Tax Act to make anti-abortion organizations that provide dishonest counselling to pregnant women about their rights and options ineligible for charitable status..." I am requesting all the supporting documentation to and from the The Privy Council Office and to and from any other government department including the PMO, that supports this need to make anti-abortion charities lose their charitable status. This would also include all documented materials from external persons or organizations and government departments that provided evidence of this "dishonest counselling" to the PCO. I would also like to see the criteria that will be used to dis-qualify the affected organizations for losing their charitable status. In other words, how will Revenue Canada decide that these organizations are engaging in "dishonest counselling"?” My request would be from Jan 1, 2020 to the present day”.

It took almost eight months to receive a miniscule 10 pages. From what little I did receive, and based on how long it took to receive it, I must conclude that they looked really hard to find something, anything at all, that would support their persecution of pro-life organizations. But they couldn't find a thing:

  • I received no supporting documentation that supports the 'need' to make charities lose their charitable status.
  • I received no supporting documentation from external persons or organizations of evidence of any 'dishonest counseling'.
  • I did not receive the 'criteria' that would be used to disqualify these organizations from losing their charitable status.
What I did receive, was an admission that there is no legal right to abortion in Canada:
"Although abortion was decriminalized in 1988 as a result of R. v. Morgentaler, there is no legal right to abortion in Canada.

The mandate to remove the charitable status from pro-life groups by this Liberal government is based purely on ideological reasons, not on any evidence, and not on any facts.

Monday, February 5, 2024

Dying with Dignity's death advocacy is heartwarming, motivating, exciting, wonderful, awesome

Some particularly ghoulish quotes from Dying with Dignity's emails, as they eagerly begged for donations prior to the year end. (Remember that in 2022 they had $8 million dollars in assets; spent a whopping $612,015 on fundraising, $793,408 on advertising, and $1,240,622 on salaries. No small potatoes for these death pushers but clearly they needed more.)

"I have been blown away by the incredible response we received last week in the lead up to the 2023 year-end deadline. It was one of the most heart-warming and motivating acknowledgements of the deep commitment to this work...1,154 donors across 10 provinces, 2 territories, and 3 states, we raised an unprecedented $197,000 toward our 2024 budgetary goals...thank you for being part of this wonderful moment...what this backing means for Dying With Dignity Canada this year... we will be investing deeply in our advocacy, public education, patient navigation and support programs to advance end-of-life choice and care across the country... we will be championing policy changes to remove barriers to access at both the federal level (including any remaining legal impediments) and provincial level (primarily addressing institutional religious obstruction)...The possibilities are quite exciting.

...

I have, what we fondly call at the office, the ‘awesome problem.’It happens when your work goes a little too well. And by solving one problem you create a whole new one — and, of course, make more work for yourself in the process. But I like to focus on the ‘awesome’ part of the ‘awesome problem’: it means that Kelsey, Kat and I are on the right track. People across Canada are hungry for more resources, support and community around end-of-life choice and care. As word spreads about the tools, demand for kits and guides that can help patients and their families at every stage of their end-of-life exploration — including medical assistance in dying (MAID) — has only continued to grow. I have a feeling that you might want to join me in tackling this ‘awesome problem.’ Will you chip in $50, or whatever you can, to help fund Dying With Dignity Canada’s ambitious Support program goals in 2024? Our budget deadline for this ends on December 31.

But then this week DYDC's email took a somber note when they learned that the government will again delay euthanasia for mental illness. Darn it.

DYDC is also pushing for advance requests to be killed. Heck, they will even help you write your own op-ed to newspapers.:

"You can start with something as simple as “This is my experience and why I support advance requests for medical assistance in dying.” Reach out to our Communications team at media@dyingwithdignity.ca if you would like support in writing your piece or connecting with your local paper."

And if you have dementia, there's still hope you can be put to death if you: 

"satisfy all the requirements laid out in the federal law." Whew.

Last but not least DYDC has written a handy booklet: "What to expect at a MAID death." It gives you all the information you need to know about what it's like to be killed by lethal injection but were afraid to ask.

Here Dying with Dignity gets some old people to carry their death signs for them.