The Euthanasia Prevention Coalition upholds that the Canadian federal budget announcement that people with disabilities, who qualify, can receive $200 more per month, is an insufficient amount to meet the basic needs of Canadians with disabilities. Alex Schadenberg
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| Meghan Schrader |
Instead of robustly funding the Disability Benefit that Canadian disability rights advocates had hoped would lift poor people with disabilities at least up to the poverty line, Justin Trudeau’s government allocated only $200 a month for the new benefit (twitter comment) and attached qualification for the benefit to the Disability Tax Credit, making it difficult to qualify for. (CTV news article).
The gutted sobbing of disabled people on disability benefits who were so hoping that they would finally be able to eat three times a day is an indictment of a government that prioritizes everything but disabled people. The fact that Canada’s government would give their starving and demoralized disabled citizens only an extra $6.18 a day is truly vile, and speaks to how much Canada, and the world, don't understand the needs of (Twitter comment) disabled people.
Moreover, the current Canadian government responded to the cries of disabled people with excuses and statements that Conservatives will simply cancel the benefit entirely. Every conservative voted for the benefit. The current government’s response is a hallmark of an abusive relationship: the government is telling the disabled people that they are killing and starving “no one will ever love you but me.” (Twitter comment).
One reason that I so strongly oppose assisted suicide is that there are too many in the United states who think like Justin Trudeau and the Canadian middle class (Article) and look longingly at Canada as a model (Article) for our country: “I want the free dental care, I want the $10 daycare, I want free lunches for my kids, I want the perfect autonomous death…” (Article) And those same people never consider the fact that they don’t actually need those entitlements in the same way that disabled people need accommodations and care; (Twitter comment) they don’t even think about the fact that disabled people exist. (Twitter comment) Others understand that their entitlements are coming at the expense of disabled people’s very lives, yet are willing to keep the people killing them in power because they want the free stuff.
Well, guess what, ableds: disabled people don’t owe you anything; we especially do not owe you our lives. You’re not entitled to anything at disabled people’s expense just because you want it.
All other Canadian political parties - the NDP, the Conservatives, the Greens - must roundly condemn the inadequate support for disabled people. (Twitter comment) And people in the United States need to stop looking at Canada as a model for how our society should function. All ethical people must join together and work hard to keep Canada’s degradation of the disabled people from oozing over our borders and making the already third class citizenship (Article) of disabled Americans (Meghan Schrader Twitter comment) even worse.
Meghan Schrader is an autistic person who is an instructor at E4 - University of Texas (Austin) and an EPC-USA board member.
Everybody, left and right, agrees that there should be a safety net. Obviously, the sick and disabled, the young, the old and the partnerless mothers, are the ones who should be at the centre of that concern. Or, as my grandfather used to say: first we look after them as can't look after themselves.
ReplyDeleteUnfortunately, that is not the way the Canadian Welfare State is structured.
The taxation side is fully covered, of course. There is no more money to take. All of the money is sucked up by the fiscal vacuum cleaner. 50% income tax. 15 % sales tax. Property tax. Carbon Tax. The active, tax-paying population is fed up with being milked like cows and sheered like sheep. They will not (and objectively can not) pay any more.
But the money is not given to those who cannot look after themselves. It is given to those the regime believes it needs to mollify to remain in power.
The sick and disabled are of very little consequence to the regime. They (we) inspire no fear.
In fact, the regime understands that the only way to hang on to all of the money that has been stolen --the only way to pay off all the groups it truly fears, and to give every apparatchik (and their girlfriend, and their dog) a 100k job-- is to actually throw the truly needy under the bus.
For the disabled to support the "progressive" left, at this time, can only be seen as a sort of Stockholm Syndrome. For it is precisely the multiple elements of the progressive left which are stealing the money which should be going to them. And it is the progressive left which has hit on euthanasia as a means to balance the books.
And that (for idealistic fanciers of the Canadian myth), is realpolitik in Canada today.
The Greens are the progressive left. - Thomas Lester
ReplyDeleteI don’t know much about Canadian political parties but it sounds like that might be the case; Green Party member Mike Morrice did an awesome speech about how lack of support and Canada’s MAiD program are connected: https://twitter.com/morricemike/status/1772327402607194449
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