Category: Canada
The country that mocks America’s ‘culture of death’ has embraced one of its own
Canada loves to lecture America about compassion. Every time a shooting makes the headlines, Canadian commentators cannot wait to discuss how the United States has a “culture of death” because we refuse to regulate guns the way enlightened nations supposedly do.
But north of our border, a very different crisis is unfolding — one that is harder to moralize because it exposes a deeper cultural failure.
A society that no longer recognizes the value of life will not long defend freedom, dignity, or moral order.
The Canadian government is not only permitting death, but it’s also administering, expanding, and redefining it as “medical care.” Medical assistance in dying is no longer a rare, tragic exception. It has become one of the country’s leading causes of death, offered to people whose problems are treatable, whose conditions are survivable, and whose value should never have been in question.
In Canada, MAID is now responsible for nearly 5% of all deaths — 1 out of every 20 citizens. And this is happening in a country that claims the moral high ground over American gun violence. Canada now records more deaths per capita from doctors administering lethal drugs than America records from firearms. Their number is 37.9 deaths per 100,000 people. Ours is 13.7. Yet we are the country supposedly drowning in a “culture of death.”
No lecture from abroad can paper over this fact: Canada has built a system where eliminating suffering increasingly means eliminating the sufferer.
Choosing death over care
One example of what Canada now calls “compassion” is the case of Jolene Bond, a woman suffering from a painful but treatable thyroid condition that causes dangerously high calcium levels, bone deterioration, soft-tissue damage, nausea, and unrelenting pain. Her condition is severe, but it is not terminal. Surgery could help her. And in a functioning medical system, she would have it.
But Jolene lives under socialized medicine. The specialists she needs are either unavailable, overrun with patients, or blocked behind bureaucratic requirements she cannot meet. She cannot get a referral. She cannot get an appointment. She cannot reach the doctor in another province who is qualified to perform the operation. Every pathway to treatment is jammed by paperwork, shortages, and waitlists that stretch into the horizon and beyond.
Yet the Canadian government had something else ready for her — something immediate.
They offered her MAID.
Not help, not relief, not a doctor willing to drive across a provincial line and simply examine her. Instead, Canada offered Jolene a state-approved death. A lethal injection is easier to obtain than a medical referral. Killing her would be easier than treating her. And the system calls that compassion.
Bureaucracy replaces medicine
Jolene’s story is not an outlier. It is the logical outcome of a system that cannot keep its promises. When the machinery of socialized medicine breaks down, the state simply replaces care with a final, irreversible “solution.” A bureaucratic checkbox becomes the last decision of a person’s life.
Canada insists its process is rigorous, humane, and safeguarded. Yet the bureaucracy now reviewing Jolene’s case is not asking how she can receive treatment; it is asking whether she has enough signatures to qualify for a lethal injection. And the debate among Canadian officials is not how to preserve life, but whether she has met the paperwork threshold to end it.
This is the dark inversion that always emerges when the state claims the power to decide when life is no longer worth living. Bureaucracy replaces conscience. Eligibility criteria replace compassion. A panel of physicians replaces the family gathered at a bedside. And eventually, the “right” to die becomes an expectation — especially for those who are poor, elderly, or alone.
Photo by Graham Hughes/NurPhoto via Getty Images
The logical end of a broken system
We ignore this lesson at our own peril. Canada’s health care system is collapsing under demographic pressure, uncontrolled migration, and the unavoidable math of government-run medicine.
When the system breaks, someone must bear the cost. MAID has become the release valve.
The ideology behind this system is already drifting south. In American medical journals and bioethics conferences, you will hear this same rhetoric. The argument is always dressed in compassion. But underneath, it reduces the value of human life to a calculation: Are you useful? Are you affordable? Are you too much of a burden?
The West was built on a conviction that every human life has inherent value. That truth gave us hospitals before it gave us universities. It gave us charity before it gave us science. It is written into the Declaration of Independence.
Canada’s MAID program reveals what happens when a country lets that foundation erode. Life becomes negotiable, and suffering becomes a justification for elimination.
A society that no longer recognizes the value of life will not long defend freedom, dignity, or moral order. If compassion becomes indistinguishable from convenience, and if medicine becomes indistinguishable from euthanasia, the West will have abandoned the very principles that built it. That is the lesson from our northern neighbor — a warning, not a blueprint.
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Husband of woman failed by Canadian health care system thanks Glenn Beck for intervening: ‘You’ve opened up a lot of doors’
Blaze Media co-founder Glenn Beck and his team, now working in conjunction with elements of the Trump administration, are in the process of rescuing a Canadian woman failed by her country’s socialist health care system and led into thinking the only remedy for her painful living-nightmare might be state-facilitated suicide.
The day after Canadian state media did its apparent best to frame the American intervention as “political posturing” and a “distraction from the real issues,” the Saskatchewan woman’s husband expressed his profound gratitude to Beck for his efforts to help Jolene Van Alstine.
‘If it was me, I think I would have had a gun to my head long ago.’
Miles Sundeen, speaking on Thursday to Beck in what became a tear-filled episode of “The Glenn Beck Program,” said at the outset, “First of all, I just wanted to say thank you so much. Apparently you’re a very popular guy. You’ve opened up a lot of doors.”
“It’s been a long and very arduous journey. It’s been over eight years now that Jolene has been very ill. We’ve gone through very tough times trying to get help through our health care system; long, long wait times both to see specialists, to get a diagnosis initially, and then, of course, to wait times for surgeries as well,” said Sundeen. “The problem is, of course, as this disease continues to devastate her body, it becomes worse and worse as time goes on.”
Van Alstine has a rare parathyroid disease called normocalcemic primary hyperparathyroidism, which causes nausea and vomiting and draws calcium from the bones into the blood, resulting in extreme bone pain, weakened bone density, and fractures. According to Sundeen, Van Alstine’s immobilization by the disease has also resulted in other conditions, namely diverticulitis and osteoporosis, not to mention “mental damage.”
While she has undergone multiple surgeries in hopes of addressing the disease, she still requires a specialized procedure to remove her overactive parathyroid gland.
The trouble is that there is presently no surgeon in her province able to perform the operation. While she could potentially receive the surgery elsewhere in Canada, Van Alstine has indicated that she must first obtain a referral but cannot secure one as none of the endocrinologists in her region are accepting new patients.
L: Alla Gnidenko/Getty Images; R: Blaze Media
Sundeen suggested that the endocrinologists and specialists aren’t necessarily to blame, noting that the Canadian health care system is “just absolutely overwhelmed.”
While Sundeen suggested that mismanagement is the system’s top problem, he noted that the system has also been “completely devastated” by underfunding and the huge influx of immigrants into the country.
According to the 2021 census, 23% of people living in Canada were foreign-born and 2.5% — over 924,000 — were nonpermanent residents. A government report released on Nov. 26 indicated that the 2021 census actually missed 38% of nonpermanent residents in that count. The top three national origins of the immigrants flooding into Canada under the Trudeau Liberal regime were India, Philippines, and China. Pakistan and Iran also made the top-10 list of national origins.
The sudden surge in demand on citizen resources helped strain a system that was already set for a reckoning with a graying population.
The apparent failure of the health care system is especially frustrating for Sundeen, who told Beck that “with this surgery, the parathyroid symptoms will disappear.”
“She can get back to an almost-normal life as far as the parathyroid hormone goes,” added Sundeen.
‘We’ll get it done.’
After years of pain and little evidence that her nation’s strained health care system will get around to helping her, Van Alstine started the process of joining the tens of thousands of other Canadians who’ll be killed under the government’s Medical Assistance in Dying euthanasia program, which has in recent years become one of the top five causes of death in Canada.
George Carson, a MAID approval doctor, confirmed this week that he assessed Van Alstine and provided her with his approval.
Sundeen stressed to Beck, however, that “she wants to live.”
“But when your life is absolutely stolen from you — stolen from you for eight years, and you suffer so much pain, depression, and anxiety — I love her with all my heart,” said Sundeen.
“She’s a strong girl. If it was me, I think I would have had a gun to my head long ago.”
Beck emphasized to Sundeen that neither he nor his wife was alone.
“We’ll find a way to make this happen if it is at all possible. We pray for you. There are millions of people who are praying for you now, and we’ll do everything we can,” added Beck.
Beck indicated that he has been in contact with elements of the Trump administration, and there appears to be some movement on getting Van Alstine help in America.
He noted that a “very high-level administrative official just called and said, ‘Let’s save her life. We’ll get it done.'”
Beck has personally volunteered to fly her down, put her up, and set her up to meet some doctors.
Visibly moved by his conversation with Sundeen and fighting back tears, Beck noted that he hopes to be able to call him back with some “good news.”
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Glenn Beck works to save pain-racked Canadian woman left at euthanasia dead end by broken socialist health care system
Blaze Media co-founder Glenn Beck and his team are desperately trying to save a woman in the Canadian prairie province of Saskatchewan who has been failed by her country’s socialist health care system.
Jolene Van Alstine of Regina has for eight years suffered from a rare parathyroid disease called normocalcemic primary hyperparathyroidism, which causes nausea and vomiting and draws calcium from the bones into the blood, resulting in extreme bone pain, weakened bone density, and fractures.
‘I’ve been alone lying on the couch for eight years, sick and curled up in a ball, pushing for the day to end.’
Van Alstine has undergone three surgeries but still requires a specialized procedure to remove her overactive parathyroid gland.
The problem, according to Canadian state media, is that there is presently no surgeon in the province able to perform the operation. While there are apparently capable and available surgeons elsewhere in Canada, Van Alstine has indicated that she must first obtain a referral — and cannot secure one, as none of the endocrinologists in her region are accepting new patients.
Until this week, Van Alstine was running short on hope.
“My friends have stopped visiting me. I’m isolated. I’ve been alone lying on the couch for eight years, sick and curled up in a ball, pushing for the day to end,” she told state media.
Glenn Beck noted Wednesday on his show, “She’s riddled with pain. Yesterday, we found out that she was in the ER because she’s having all kinds of complications because of this. And she can’t take it any more.”
“This one is so grotesque,” continued Beck, “because the state would rather have her die.”
‘We expect to see more than 16,500 “medical assistance in dying” or euthanasia deaths.’
The prospect that her treatable disease might go untreated prompted Van Alstine to contemplate state-facilitated suicide, which is euphemistically referred to in Canada as Medial Assistance in Dying.
RELATED: ‘Pro-death legislators’ want euthanasia in Illinois — Canada reveals why that’s a terrible idea
Photo by ROMAIN PERROCHEAU/AFP via Getty Images
“I understand how long and how much she’s suffered, and it’s horrific, the physical suffering, but it’s also the mental anguish,” Miles Sundeen, Van Alstine’s partner, said late last month. “No hope — no hope for the future, no hope for any relief. I don’t want her to do it, but I understand where she’s at.”
George Carson, a MAID approval doctor, indicated this week that he assessed Van Alstine and provided her with his approval. Since she has apparently also received approval from a nurse practitioner, she now requires only one more approval in order to secure a spot among the tens of thousands of Canadians who will be snuffed out in the new year by their socialist health care system, which was originally founded by the eugenicist Tommy Douglas.
MAID is among the top five leading causes of death in Canada and accounted for 4.7% of all deaths in the country in 2023.
Rebecca Vachon, health program director at the Canadian think tank Cardus, recently told Blaze News that “based on current reporting from the most populous provinces, we expect to see more than 16,500 ‘medical assistance in dying’ or euthanasia deaths in 2024, which is an increase from the 15,343 deaths reported in 2023. This will likely result in MAID deaths constituting 5% of total deaths in Canada that year.”
MAID — which Canada’s Office of the Parliamentary Budget Officer boasted in October 2020 would, with expanded access, “result in a net reduction in health care costs for the provincial governments” — appears to be fast becoming a relief valve for a health care system that has come under great strain in part because of an aging population but largely because of the immigration-driven population gains overseen by the Trudeau Liberals.
‘Imagine saving a woman’s life for Christmas.’
Average annual immigration from 2000 to 2015 was 617,800. Under the Trudeau Liberals, average annual immigration was 1.4 million from 2016 to 2024.
As of April 1, 2025, Canada had an estimated population of just over 41.5 million people. According to the 2021 census, over 8.3 million people — 23% of the total population — “were, or had ever been, a landed immigrant or permanent resident in Canada.” This, however, appears to be a gross undercount.
A new government report revealed that 38% of non-permanent residents — roughly another 576,000 — were potentially “missed” by the 2021 census.
According to the Canadian Institute for Health Information, there were 2.41 physicians per 1,000 people. The United States, by comparison, reportedly has at least 3.6 doctors per 1,000. An estimated 5.9 million Canadians — around 14% — don’t have regular access to a primary care provider.
“This is your socialized health care, gang,” Beck said on Wednesday of Van Alstine’s case.
“This is the reality of compassionate, progressive health care. Canada has to end this insanity. And Americans must never let it spread here.”
After Van Alstine’s last-ditch plea for help to Canadian lawmakers and officials failed to immediately produce the desired results, an American got involved.
“If there is any surgeon in America who can do this, I’ll pay for this patient to come down here for treatment,” Beck wrote Tuesday on X.
RELATED: JD Vance to Canada: Stop blaming Trump for your decline
Photo by Artur Widak/NurPhoto via Getty Images
Beck revealed in a series of announcements first, that multiple surgeons reached out with an interest in helping; second, that his team made contact with Van Alstine and Sundeen; and third, that his team had connected with the U.S. State Department after discovering that Van Alstine lacked a passport to gain legal entry into the United States.
“I’ll fly her down. I’ll put her up. I’ll get her the doctors,” Beck said on his show. “We need to get her the surgery.”
“Imagine saving a woman’s life for Christmas,” added Beck.
“Is there anything better that we could do?”
Sundeen told Canadian state media after Beck’s team spoke with him, “For us to have it done in the States would be financially impossible otherwise.”
An Ipsos poll conducted last year for Global News found that 42% of Canadians would travel to the U.S. and personally pay for more routine health care if needed — up 10 percentage points over the previous year — and 38% would travel to the U.S. and pay out of pocket for emergency care — up 9 points over the previous year.
Sean Simpson, vice president of Ipsos Public Affairs, noted, “I think the increase is happening because of the increasing level of frustration that Canadians have in the health care system.”
“It’s not the quality of care that people are upset about; it is the timely access to care, meaning wait times in emergency rooms, wait times to see specialists, to get appointments, for screening,” continued Simpson. “As a result, we have a significant chunk of the population say if they can get that service elsewhere, such as the United States, they may consider doing so.”
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Massacre at Universal Ostrich Farms: Canada kills hundreds of birds despite no evidence of avian flu
The Canadian Food Inspection Agency slaughtered hundreds of ostriches at Edgewood, British Columbia’s Universal Ostrich Farms Thursday night.
Using rifles, at least two “marksmen” believed to be working at the CFIA’s Enforcement Investigation and Services Unit in its Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, branch unloaded hundreds of rounds into the birds beginning on Thursday evening and continuing into the early hours of Friday morning.
While sifting through material filled with the blood and remains of the supposedly infected ostriches, the police wore no protective gear and worked with their bare hands.
To those who raised and cared for them, each ostrich was more than a number. Among the dead were Spike, “tough and protective”; the “feisty” and “full of attitude” Anna; and Kickaroo, so named because of her penchant for kicking when excited.
‘Please stop’
Over 120 supporters stood in the rain and shouted their objections to the killers, including farm spokeswoman Katie Pasitney, who kneeled in front of the iron fence that had separated her from the ostriches since the CFIA and RCMP invaded and occupied the 58-acre spread located in the pastoral Kootenays, close to Valhalla Provincial Park and about two hours east of Kelowna. Sobbing profusely, Pasitney begged the shooters to “stop, please stop.”
The “culling” did not appear to be humane, as many ostriches were only injured and spent the night crying in pain as their lives receded. In the morning, CFIA “inspectors” decapitated several of the birds that continued to struggle for their lives.
Many supporters took to social media to describe the ordeal. According to one such post:
They were gunned down in the dark, over hours. I watched the lives from 6:30 a.m. to 9 p.m. and had to log off around 9 because I couldn’t take any more — the gunshots, the agonizing sounds of the birds, the screaming. By the time I muted the sound I think the count was around 600 bullets. It was absolutely f****** sickening. The anger I feel is unreal and I will not be silenced. Those responsible — the shooters, CFIA, and the corrupt cops who look the other way — you will pay in hell.
No protective gear
A source who has been integral to the farm’s response to the ongoing presence of the CFIA and RCMP told Align that aside from identity-concealing “balaclavas,” the shooters wore absolutely no protective clothing, despite the CFIA’s continued claim that the birds posed a “pathogenic” health hazard to other animals and humans.
On Sunday, the CFIA began the task of removing the ostrich carcasses from the farm. Personnel used the RCMP as farm labor to collect all the hay from the “hot zone” or death pen, which the government bureaucrats had used to corral the ostriches.
While sifting through material filled with the blood and remains of the supposedly infected ostriches, the police wore no protective gear and worked with their bare hands. The remains were then piled into blue bins and loaded onto trucks for an undisclosed dumping location, although farm supporters have been following the vehicles to discover where the birds are going.
Many believe the carcasses were headed for the port near Surrey, BC, to be loaded onto a ship for disposal at sea.
RELATED: ‘Classic display of punishment’: Canada targets family ostrich farm for destruction
David Krayden
Refusal to test
The CFIA refused to test the ostriches for evidence of avian flu in life or in death. The farm had demonstrated for almost 300 days that the birds were healthy and had developed herd immunity with antibodies that could provide valuable lessons for the natural containment of the H5N1 disease.
In a statement, the CFIA claimed it was “moving forward” with “a disease response” at the farm and noted that it would “complete depopulation and disposal measures as authorized by the Health of Animals Act and guided by the stamping out policy for highly pathogenic avian influenza (HPAI).”
The Supreme Court of Canada on Thursday dismissed an appeal from Universal Ostrich Farms to stop the Canadian Food Inspection Agency from slaughtering hundreds of ostriches of the farm because of an apparent outbreak of H5N1 avian influenza in December 2024.
‘The people have to fight back’
Pasitney said, “Our hearts are empty,” about herself and farm co-owners Karen Espersen and Dave Bilinski. She said, “It doesn’t matter if it’s a chicken or a 35-year-old ostrich; no animal should have to die inhumanely, neglected, tortured.”
The CFIA claimed that shooting the birds over several hours was the “most appropriate and humane option” for them.
But a CFIA manual on culling practice indicates that shooting should only be utilized as a “last resort.”
Pasitney has indicated that she intends to fight for other farms that have been targeted by the CFIA over a “stamping out” policy that is out of step even with the guidelines of the World Health Organization and World Organization for Animal Health.
After months of constant legal wrangling and nonstop media attention, Pasitney told Align Sunday that she needs to “get strong” as she moves ahead. “There has to be change in Canada. This cannot be allowed to continue to happen. The people have to fight back.”
REVOLTING: Canadian advocacy groups push euthanasia program for CHILDREN
Canada already has one of the world’s most expansive and permissive euthanasia programs. Under current law, adults don’t even need a terminal illness to apply for Medical Assistance in Dying. Chronic illnesses and disabilities are qualifying conditions as long as the patient is of sound mind.
But some advocacy organizations, such as Dying with Dignity Canada, want the law to be expanded to include “mature minors” — youth as young as 12, who they argue can demonstrate full decision-making capacity, with added “safeguards” such as mandatory parental consent for teens 15 and younger. Sixteen- and 17-year-olds, they argue, are mature enough to agree to be euthanized without their parents’ permission.
Canada’s Special Joint Committee on Medical Assistance in Dying apparently agrees. In February 2023, the committee determined that “eligibility for MAID should not be denied on the basis of age alone.”
While the Canadian government has announced no plans to expand MAID in this way, the issue of “mature minors” will likely resurface in 2027, when Parliament re-evaluates the program’s next major expansion — whether to allow MAID for people whose only medical condition is a mental illness.
When Pat Gray, BlazeTV host of “Pat Gray Unleashed,” heard of Canada’s MAID advocacy for minors, he had no other word for it than “evil.”
“Nothing else explains that,” he sighs. “It’s unbelievable. Canada has just, they’ve gone off a cliff.”
To hear more, watch the video below.
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Marked for death: Government slaughter of hundreds of ostriches to proceed
Lethal injection to the skull.
That’s the likely method of execution awaiting hundreds of seemingly healthy ostriches in Canada. Although shooting, neck-breaking, and gassing are also on the table.
‘Pray for the CFIA agents who were not willing to listen to a case that could have helped so many.’
The Supreme Court of Canada on Thursday dismissed an appeal from Universal Ostrich Farms, clearing the way for the Canadian Food Inspection Agency to proceed with the slaughter of hundreds of ostriches following an alleged outbreak of H5N1 avian influenza detected in December 2024.
‘Sad day’
The CFIA plans to cull the flock despite reports that the birds have remained healthy for roughly 300 consecutive days. The exact number of ostriches slated for slaughter remains uncertain; the agency has said it is still working to establish a precise count, while the farm’s owners — Karen Espersen, Dave Bilinski, and Katie Pasitney — say they have been prevented from conducting their own tally since federal authorities assumed control of the property.
Under a Supreme Court order granting the CFIA “custody” of the animals, the farmers were also prohibited from feeding or caring for them. The agency was instead tasked with providing food, water, and bedding.
“This is a sad day for Canada,” Pasitney, who has served as the farm’s spokeswoman throughout the case, told Align.
RELATED: Dead bird walking: RFK Jr. is the only hope for 399 healthy ostriches on Canada’s chopping block
David Krayden/Alex Wroblewski/Getty Images
Guilty of ‘innovation’?
“Our leaders have let us down yet again. We will make it our life’s mission to ensure that the Canadian Food Inspection Agency is held accountable for the damage they’ve done — not just to our family, but to all the families out there.”
She added that the farm’s owners “pray for the CFIA agents who were not willing to listen to a case that could have helped so many — not just Canadians, but the world — with innovation and science to mitigate viral risk.”
Accusations of mistreatment
Federal authorities first seized control of Universal Ostrich Farms on Sept. 22, with CFIA and RCMP officers occupying the 58-acre property in Edgewood, British Columbia, about two hours east of Kelowna. Two days later, the Supreme Court issued a temporary stay on the planned cull, agreeing to review the farm’s appeal of the CFIA order.
In the weeks since, the farm has released videos purporting to show CFIA inspectors neglecting or mistreating the ostriches in violation of that court stay — evidence the owners said they hoped would justify removing the agency from the property.
In a statement Thursday, the CFIA reiterated that the ostriches posed “a risk to animal and human health” and confirmed it would “move forward to complete depopulation and disposal measures as authorized by the Health of Animals Act.”
“The Federal Court of Canada and the Federal Court of Appeal both determined that the CFIA acted reasonably and in a procedurally fair manner,” the statement said. The agency also warned supporters gathered at the farm not to obstruct inspectors, citing potential prosecution under Sections 35 and 65 of the Health of Animals Act.
