ARCC lobbies government against pro-life charity

Joyce Arthur and her Abortion Rights Coalition of Canada (ARCC) are registered lobbyists. I wondered. What kind of lobbying are they doing?

So I submitted an ATIP to Employment and Social Development. What I found out was shocking but not surprising. It seems that ARCC is having big feelings--writing to two different ministers and the Prime Minister--that a pro-life organization received a paltry $3,362 in 2021 through the Canada Summer Jobs program (when I checked I saw that they actually received $3,383 in 2022). 

Let's compare that to what another charity--the pro-abortion charity--Action Canada for Sexual Health and Rights, received in 2022 in government funding: $3,003,355. That's 888 times as much as the pro-life charity received.

ARCC apparently didn't like that a pro-life charity received this miniscule grant. Because ARCC demanded of ESDC, that this charity:

• Does not receive any Canada Summer Jobs funding this year
• Is permanently disqualified from receiving CSJ funding in the future
• Is required to repay the CSJ funding they received in 2021, due to violating program requirements as their mandate and primary activities are to oppose human rights including reproductive rights

I don't believe one needs to comment on these demands made by ARCC. Other than they are both ridiculous and petty.

The pro-life charity paid out a total of $3,455 in salaries for two part-time employees. That's a $1,727.50 salary per employee, which was covered by this itsy-bitsy, teeny-weenie grant the pro-life group received. For comparison purposes, Action Canada for Sexual Health and Rights's total compensation paid to employees that year was $2,175,492, five of whom made between $80,000 and $119,999, and five of whom made between $120,000 and $159,999. The $3,003,355 received by Action Canada in government funding, would have more than covered these exorbitant salaries, with almost a million left over to use to promote their pro-abortion agenda.

Lobbying the government is one thing. But for a pro-abortion group to lobby the government against giving a pocket-change sized grant to a pro-life charity is pretty low even for a pro-abortion group. 

Federal employees get $75,000 to change genders, but not to change back

You may recall that Federal public servants can now get $75,000 to transition to a different gender.

So I asked the next logical question in an ATIP:

"I would like to see all briefing notes, emails, etc. that pertain to public servants who wish to detransition, and whether or not they will also receive this $75,000 benefit."

The answer is no:

"The gender affirmation benefit will not provide coverage for...reversal of gender affirmation procedures"

 And this:

"All procedures must me performed in Canada and considered medically necessary"

Reminds me of abortion, where they tell us that abortions are medically necessary when they never are.

So if you decide you made the biggest mistake of your life by changing genders in the first place, well that is not covered, because it is (presumably) not medically necessary. This is how we twist ourselves into pretzels trying to create our own truth.

Replacing objective reality with subjective reality

In response to my last blog on Dying with Dignity (I always cringe when I repeat those words--how can you die with dignity when someone kills you?) below are some comments I received from Fr. Tony Van Hee. With Fr. Tony's permission I post them below.

"It seems to me that it [the paper] is rife with wokeism, in the sense that it replaces objective reality with subjective reality.

 

They define "the relevant type of harm as the subjective experience ...", and "one's subjective well-being ... as one of the central justifications for MAID", in their "argument from harm reduction." 

 

Although they use the word subjective only once in the rest of the article, namely, "Trusting a person with a disability's subjective reports ... (p. 4, top para, column b.), their whole concept of autonomy is subjective.

 

As long as their is a semblance of "meaningful", "self-determination", "hope", "self-governance", "choice", "option", "self-trust", self-worth", "what one cares about", "what matters to them", "agency", autonomy not being "entirely undermined", "capacities and self-regarding attitudes", "the ability to understand, appreciate the consequences of their choice, the capacity to value, the ability to reflect on the values guiding their decision, as well as the attitudes of engaged hope, self-worth and self-trust", "the 'most salient dimensions' of autonomy ... competency and authenticity", etc., etc., as long as there is a semblance of any of these, regardless of unjust social conditions, these persons have sufficient personal autonomy to choose to have themselves killed by MAID. 

 

That is replacing objective reality with subjective reality.

 

In regard to being deceived "under the guise of good," I refer to Ignatius' Rules For Discernment Of Spirits II, 332:

 

"It is a mark of the evil spirit to assume the appearance of an angel of light. He begins by suggesting thoughts that are suited to a devout soul, and ends by suggesting his own. For example, he will suggest holy and pious thoughts that are wholly in conformity with the sanctity of the soul. Afterwards, he will endeavor little by little to end by drawing the soul into his hidden snares and evil designs."

 

I find this very relevant to these industrious and determined people, such as these two authors, and Joyce Arthur.

 

Ultimately, we are really up against Satan, and we are no match for his cunning.

 

In my opinion, our only hope is to be able to expose his cunning by the discernment of spirits. 

 

I know for a fact that even very intelligent good people, faced with the same facts, can come up with directly opposite conclusions.

 

There has to be something other than reason by which we decide what is true and what is false.

 

The only tool I, personally, have is the [St. Ignatius of Loyola's Spiritual Exercises] discernment of spirits. I don't know of any other reliable tool.

 

329 of the above rules helps me:

 

"It is characteristic of God and His Angels, when they act upon the soul, to give true happiness and spiritual joy, and to banish all the sadness and disturbances which are caused by the enemy.

 

"It is characteristic of the evil one to fight against such happiness and consolation by proposing fallacious reasonings, subtilties, and continual deceptions."

 

"Fallacious reasonings, subtilties, and continual deceptions" are what I experience when I read Joyce Arthur, these authors, and others like them."

MAID proponents write paper to justify social euthanasia

I've just received my third ATIP from Health Canada regarding Dying with Dignity. At first it didn't look like I received much. Until I read the one email, and a copy of a paper from the University of Toronto that was published in the Journal of Medical Ethics. 

This is what I had asked for:

"All records related to meetings, emails, documents, etc. between Canadian not for-profit "Dying with Dignity Canada" and Health Canada officials between January 19, 2023 and the present day.""

That was the entire corpus for the six month period; not much correspondence at all. But what I read was deeply disturbing.

First of all, remember there is already a cozy relationship between DWDC and government departments. In my previous posts we learned that these people have already met with two different government ministers. Now we have an email, I'm guessing, from the president of DWDC, Helen Long. DWDC seems to be pushing further MAID eligabality qualifications to the government:

"Here is the paper that was recently published which I mentioned today. Take care, Helen"

Clearly DWDC has the ear of government officials. Remember too, that they receive government funding. And that the highest earner in DWDC earned between $200 and $250k in 2022 (looks like they got a raise over 2021 salary). There is money to be made in promoting death.

Secondly, along with this one email, I received the paper discussed, entitled Choosing death in unjust conditions: hope, autonomy and harm reduction from Kayla Wiebe and Amy Mullin. The title itself is not only creepy, but deceiving. No matter how you slice it, there is neither hope, nor autonomy, nor harm reduction in killing people. The authors twist themselves into contortions, trying to make the case that people who are in:

"unjust social circumstances as circumstances in which people do not have meaningful access to a range of options to which they are entitled."

... should be eligible for MAID.

The paper was published in the Journal of Medical Ethics. You will have to pay to get a copy from their site. But I received a copy in my ATIP and here it is.

There are over 500+ Twitter comments regarding this paper. Many of these comments are from other countries. I used Google Translate to get the English version of some of these comments. One example:

"Here is the "justification" for euthanasia of the poorest...Is it curious ethics to invoke autonomy so that society discards some people as "worthless lives", shoving them into desperate situations and "respecting" their choice? free?"

Here is a Twitter thread on why the arguments in this paper are problematic. It begins with this:

"I read the eugenics MAiD paper with my partner last night. He’s an academic and agency is a topic he’s an expert on. We had to stop reading multiple times in horror at the wrongheadedness or audacity of the arguments."

Then there's this article in IMPACT ETHICS: MAKING A DIFFERENCE IN BIOETHICS. It says it all:

MORAL AND INTELLECTUAL GYMNASTICS IN DEFENSE OF CANADA’S OUT-OF-CONTROL MAID REGIME by Daryl Pullman

"Cases are now emerging of individuals opting for MAiD when they are unable to find adequate social supports to relieve the burden of their day-to-day existence. When a society devolves to the point where it redefines every kind of social injustice as a “medical problem” such that MAiD is a legitimate or even preferred option, society in general and bioethicists in particular must consider the moral options. Either we challenge the legal and moral processes that now sanction such desperate actions, or we perform the moral and intellectual gymnastics necessary to justify those tragic “choices”. These authors chose the latter."

...Bill C-7 drove a wedge between the end of life and suffering, thus co-opting the medical profession into providing a solution for individuals facing all manner of social injustice. These authors are complicit in this process by driving another wedge between persons and the tragic choices they feel compelled to make. By then describing these forced decisions as “meaningfully autonomous” they make it more important to respect the putative “choice” than to respect the persons driven to make them. Elsewhere I’ve described such sophistical reasoning as “moral nonsense”.

Toward the end of their paper Wiebe and Mullin change gears and offer a consequentialist consideration, ostensibly in support of their rationale for honoring such tragically “autonomous” choices. Honoring them, they contend, will result in harm reduction. That is, rather than forcing people to suffer through their circumstances by refusing them MAiD, thus furthering the harms their unjust social circumstances have already inflicted upon them, we should end their suffering by killing them (MAiD). All things considered, they argue, this would be a lesser harm. We cannot discuss all the potential chilling sequelae of such creeping consequentialism in the context of an expansive and ever expanding MAiD regime such as we have in Canada. A closer reading might conclude that such consequentialist reasoning is really the core argument here: the attempt to salvage some notion of “autonomy” is intended to make it more palatable. It is just such reasoning that keeps the disability community awake at night."

Canada's MAID regime just keeps rolling forward. There doesn't seem to be any way to stop this deadly runaway train.

Dying with Dignity highest earner makes more than $200,000

Last time I checked in 2021, the highest earner at Dying with Dignity earned between $160,000 to $199,999. 

For 2022 it seems that this person gave themselves a raise. Now he/she earns between $200,000 to $249,999. 

Apparently there's good money to be had in the promotion of killing people.

This news might terrify you--but it must be told

I hope I do not ruin your weekend with the information I am about to divulge to you. This was not my intention. But you need to know. It is in regard to policies of the Conservative Party of Canada. It is quite distressing, but I think we all need to reflect on how this information could affect its citizens, should the Conservatives ever come to power.

These particulars have been shared by one of Canada's leading organizations. A group who specializes in telling us the truth about these matters. These people have never, ever, been involved in spreading misinformation or disinformation.

Here they have helpfully "paraphrased to make clear the intended or likely meaning" of these shocking Conservative policies that would harm our democracy:

• "Compelling universities to allow anti-choice expression and hate speech on campuses" (Imagine. Allowing pro-life groups the right to their freedom of speech rights, on university campuses no less.)

• "Allowing healthcare workers to refuse to participate in or refer patients for abortion or medical assistance in dying." (Imagine. Not forcing doctors and nurses to kill their patients.)

• "Opposing the right to medical assistance in dying" (Imagine. Actually being against killing people.)

• "Prohibiting research using embryos" (Imagine. Being against using human embryos in research where these tiny humans can be dissected, discarded, or whatever else suits someone's purpose.)

• "Excluding abortion from Canada’s maternal and child health programs abroad."  (Imagine. Being against killing other countries pre-born children.)

• "Condemning sex-selection abortions." (Imagine. Being against the killing of pre-born children who are female.)

• "Amending the human rights code to allow faith-based organizations to discriminate based on their beliefs" (Imagine. Allowing Canadian citizens to practice their freedom of religion rights.)

• "Changing the criteria for Canada Summer Jobs to make anti-choice groups eligible for funding again." (Imagine. Ceasing to discriminate against pro-life people and people of faith in receiving government grants.)

• "Supporting legislation to grant fetal personhood by making it a separate crime to harm or kill a fetus during a crime against a pregnant person." (Imagine. Supporting the enactment of a separate crime when someone kills a wanted pre-born child.)

• Supporting legislation to mandate “life-saving care” and “intensive care” for fetuses born alive after an abortion." (Imagine. Supporting the provision of actual care to a child born alive after an abortion.)

• "Opposing the rights of sex workers and the decriminalization of prostitution." (Imagine. Declaring that "human beings are not objects to be enslaved, bought or sold.")

I hope I haven't unduly shocked you, but please please, take the time to reflect on how these policies would affect our dear Canada. We simply cannot, must not, let these policies ever see the light of day.

Update: Alberta MAID deaths up 34.5%

Update to Alberta's MAID deaths for FY April 1 2022 to March 31 2023. I now have the total number of killings at 1,309, up from 973 in 2021/2022. That's an increase of 34.5% deaths.