Who is in Control?

Every once in a while I read a story about some poor soul in Canada, who facing a certain and painful death, wants the assistance of a medical practitioner to end their agonizing existence. We, as Canadians under certain conditions have the right to expect such supports to end our lives. However, in some parts of this country - there are doctors and facilities who refuse to provide this service because it goes against their moral principles.

I understand some people's reluctance, I understand that there are administrators and doctors who believe that an assisted end to life is wrong and therefore they cannot participate in such activities - even including providing assistance in filling out the forms. I understand, but I do not agree. It seems profoundly unfair that an individual's right to chose when to die to be restricted by which hospital the ambulance takes us to, or who our doctor is. Requiring an already terminally ill individual to shop around for a sympathetic doctor or an accommodating hospital seems unfair and profoundly inappropriate. I might be marginally more accepting of their moral stance if I could be reassured that all medical professionals and administrators always engage in moral behaviour.

We rely on our doctors' judgments to help us make difficult decisions. But the information they give us cannot be restricted by what they think is right or wrong. Medical professionals are obliged to give us all of the information so that we can make an informed choice. To deny an individual the right to the sort of process that is outlined bill C-14 is wrong.

Doctors, of course, must be free to choose what they think is right or wrong. I, however, should not be obliged to either pay for their education (yes I know that doctors incur a large debt while training, but surely even the most naive of them does not believe that they paid for the total cost of their medical training) or to support them in their practices. If they do not want to be part of the system, great. But then they can get their money from somewhere else.

Similarly, for those hospitals who refuse to support the process of assisted dying (frequently because the origins of that hospital were the Catholic Church) should not be using public funds to operate the hospital. There is a clear expectation, on the part of members of the community that hospitals provide a full range of services. If they get to spend public money, they do not get to decide how policy is delivered.

I can understand that there needed to be a period of adjustment for hospitals and doctors. I understand that there may be older doctors who will never be able to accept the new public acceptance of assisted death. But it would seem to me that any doctor who has been trained in the last five-ten years is in the wrong profession if they are not prepared to be fully engaged in all aspects of their patients' lives.

Doctors - feel free to have your own personal values - but please do not tell me what mine should be.

Retaliatory Politics

It is sometimes difficult for me, as a Canadian, to not be seduced by the (I hope) natural desire to respond to others who are not nice to Canada. It may be because almost all of the news articles I read are Canadian, but it feels as if Canada has been particularly vulnerable to other countries, larger countries picking on us, demanding that we conform to their specific worldviews.

Most obvious of course is Mr. Trump's rants and tweets about how unfair Canada's trade practices are while the USA continued to ignore the rulings of various tribunals as to its trade practices in Canada. Throughout the NAFTA trade negotiations there was this constant nagging fear that the bully that is our neighbour to the south of us would force us into a poor deal. Even if the deal that was finally signed is not a poor one for Canada - it will never feel like a good one. While it would have been disastrous for Canada as a nation to walk away from the negotiating table - it was still tempting to do so - just to prove that we could not be bullied. It was equally as tempting to pile on the tariffs as Mr. Trump did the same.

It now appears as if China is using the same type of bullying tactics to convince Canada to ignore its treaty obligations and release Huawei chief financial officer Meng Wanzhou from her bail conditions. China has arrested at least two Canadians and further sentenced a third Canadian to be executed for drug crimes as a not-so-subtle threat against Canada. It is tempting to remind China that there are far more Chinese visitors and business people in Canada than there are Canadians in China. Perhaps we need to arrest a few dozen visitors to remind them of this. There is no reason why we could not create laws and legal systems that are just as draconian and obfuscated as the Chinese rules and systems are.

But, of course, Canada did not retaliate and impose harsh tariffs on most American products (steel being an exception), we did not threaten to shut our borders down, we did not bad mouth the president (or at least our parliamentarians didn't) in public and in spite of the threats and insults, we quietly plodded along, negotiating when the opportunity was there seeking support from others when it was possible. I suppose there was some sort of pride when it was clear that we were taking the high road in terms of how we related to the USA -perhaps it is our Christian democratic roots that suggest that rewards will come to those who wait and who are nice - but it would have been so much more fun, at least in the short term if we had been just a little bit meaner.

Similarly, I know that Canada will not start to arrest Chinese nationals on some vague possibility that they are doing something that is not good for Canada's security. I know that we will not incarcerate those citizens for extended periods of time with limited contact with the Chinese embassy or lawyers. But there is that part of me that would like to remind the Chinese leadership that things work so much better when everyone plays by the same set of rules. It is unfortunate that some countries only understand politics when one has a big club in their hands.

Until the world becomes a bit more civilized, then Canada will, I hope, continue to plod along - doing the right thing, trying to act in a fair and reasonably civilized manner. But for small minded people like me - we can't help but occasionally wish that we carried a bigger stick.

Election Time Again??

I am a self-confessed political junkie - or at least I was. There was a time when I would look forward to reading about or even better, watching a weekend-long televised political convention. I loved listening to the commentators, usually, people who were both knowledgeable in terms of the politics of the times and the players as well as being articulate in their debates. Election night was exciting as I watched the returns come in and listened to the pundits' best guesses as to what it all meant. It was always fun to get into a long conversation about alternatives to the country's/world's problems and how they could all be solved is only the right people were elected. But somehow over the past 10 years, my enthusiasm for watching or even debating politics has waned.

Part of the reason for my ever-declining interest in the world of politics is the amount of and the depth of the knowledge that is made available. There is just too much information. It comes from every conceivable angle, whether one wants it or not. Even worse, much of the information is unreliable. The political correspondents seldom have a deep comprehension of the issues, relying instead on anecdotal proofs and the rhetoric of whatever political stream they were spawned from. The information has been dumbed down so that even the most unsophisticated of us, can get the message. As opposed to an in-depth detailed analysis of the issues, what we now get is a simplistic vision of a black and white world where there is only one correct answer. The media's job now is to longer educate its readers/viewers but rather to sell them on a particular point of view.

The other reason for my declining interest in politics is that there no longer appears to be election cycles, there is no down time between election news. Of course, so much of Canadian news is dominated by what happens to the south of us. In November, the American mid-term elections (which were talked about for the proceeding twelve months) were held. Already in mid-January, Democrats are announcing who will be running. or at least wants to run, for the president in 2020. For the next 22 months, our Facebook pages and our news sites will be ever increasingly flooded with bits of trivia and the findings of irrelevant polls as to who might win and why.

Canadian politics are only marginally less all-pervasive. In spite of the fact that the Canadian federal election will not be held until mid-October of this year, it is clear that Andrew Sheer, the leader of the Conservative party is already engaged in making speeches in key areas across the country. The leader of the NDP, Jagmeet Sing is actively campaigning for a seat in B.C., and one could wonder if Justin Trudeau ever stopped campaigning since the last election. Premiers such as Doug Ford of Ontario are also making speeches that sound as if they are flogging their particular brand of solutions to whoever will listen in the hopes that their preferred national party will become the next rulers. In every national paper and media broadcast, one can find some comment or news bit explaining why one party might win or lose. It is all so tiring. It is all so irrelevant.

One has to wonder if a life-long political junkie such as myself can become tired and jaded - perhaps even occasionally uncaring - with all of the useless political noise that surrounds us, it is not surprising that those who found the whole process less interesting ten years ago - have just given up on it entirely. The political leadership and the owners/managers of our media outlets seemed to have been convinced that if one can't provide good, informed debate (or it is too expensive) that overwhelming amounts of regurgitated crap will do as well.

All of which is rather sad for those of us who always prefer quality over quantity.