Dystopia with a smiley face.

That is what Canada has turned into. every day you read a story about the government or the health care system (one and the same) offering death as a public service.

It’s ghoulish.

A Canadian woman seeking help for suicidal thoughts was reportedly told to consider Medical Assistance in Dying by staff at the Vancouver General Hospital.

The clinician advised the woman that wait times to see a psychiatrist were extremely long.https://t.co/GrCMvMocrB

— ThePublica (@ThePublicaNow) August 10, 2023

Vancouver is the suicide capital of the world these days, which is ironic because it is also an idyllic locale. It is just the sort of place I like to visit, except that now I am likely to be faced with advertisements from funeral homes that offer suicide services with a smile.

The latest outrage I came across was the story of a woman who was seeking suicide prevention help. As somebody familiar with the dangers of major depression I can assure you that suicidal ideation in such cases does not arise from rational considerations in a hopeless condition, but rather from a bout with mental illness that can be resolved through proper treatment.

In other words, people contemplating suicide due to depression can be successfully treated.

Yet there is a shortage of psychiatrists in Canada (and in the US, too, unfortunately) and the wait times can be long. Inpatient treatment is, I assume, expensive for the state to provide. So in lieu of that the Vancouver health care system is offering to help patients off themselves.

A Canadian woman was reportedly offered information on Medical Assistance in Dying (MAID) by a clinician at Vancouver General Hospital after seeking medical assistance for suicidal ideations.

Kathryn Mentler, a first-year counselling student, told The Globe and Mail that she went to the hospital in June to get professional help to treat her chronic depression and ongoing thoughts of suicide.

Extremely vulnerable, Mentler, who is 37, was shocked when the clinician asked if she had considered MAID, advising her that wait times to see a psychiatrist are extremely long due to Canada’s “broken” medical system.

This is what counts as medical care in Canada, and it will likely be coming to a hospital near you as well.

Leftism presents itself as the epitome of compassion. But the definition of compassion is a sick and twisted version of what you and I expect when we think of the term.

If a friend showed up at your door and asked for help with suicidal thoughts the last thing that would pop through your mind is to offer to help do the deed.

• “I don’t want to die, but I keep thinking about killing myself”–friend
• “Have you considered pills? How about carbon monoxide poisoning?”–you

Yet that is the response of Canadian doctors. “I can cure your pain forever with this one little shot.”

This is not the first time MAID has raised questions about its ethics. As previously reported by The Publica, a 47-year-old Toronto woman suffering from severe anorexia was encouraged by her psychiatrist to research medically assisted suicide in 2021.

Lisa Pauli, who weighs just 92lbs, explained in an interview with Reuters that her anorexia has made it difficult to perform daily tasks like carrying groceries and doing laundry.

“Every day is hell … I’m so tired. I’m done,” she said, “I’ve tried everything. I feel like I’ve lived my life.” Despite many people pleading with her to get help, Pauli explains: “She would rather die than recover and gain weight.”

A 33-year-old paraplegic woman and single mother of three similarly announced she had applied for assisted suicide because it was “easier to access than the support services” she needed, according to The Publica.

Canadians have been very proud of their government-run healthcare system, and simply assume that the people running it are doing so with the best interests of the patients at heart.

I see little evidence of that. Instead what I see is a government that embraces the happy and healthy and encourages to pay their taxes to keep the system up and running, but rushes to dispose of people once their usefulness to the regime is exhausted. People who are sick, disabled, mentally ill, or poor are drains on resources and are easier to dispose of.

Socialism always works this way. It promises the moon and delivers an airless vacuum of despair to people who are not useful and compliant.

America’s healthcare system is broken as well, shot through with paperwork, bureaucracy, and other inefficiencies that attend to any third-party payer system. But at least so far the incentives to dispose of inconvenient patients don’t seem as prominent. But as government pays for more and more of the freight the incentives will increase.

It is a mystery why so many people assume that government programs can ever be compassionate. It’s not like our day-to-day experiences with large bureaucracies of any kind are positive, no less government bureaucracies. We deal with nameless and faceless people and get treated as nameless and faceless malfunctioning widgets.

And now as disposable ones.