Sheila Gunn-Reed interviews Michelle Sterling of Friends of Science, linking David Buckle’s 2018 self-immolation to rising MAID risks for climate-anxious youth, fueled by "invasive species" rhetoric and policies like Canada’s Bill C-7 and C-12. Sterling critiques RCP 8.5 scenarios, net-zero mandates (e.g., Jonathan Wilkinson’s 2019 emissions plateau claims), and economic warnings—$100K house price hikes, 60-cent CAD, Alberta exodus—while citing Robert Lyman’s reports on China’s (28% growth) and India’s (69%) ignored Paris targets. Cases like a Belgium woman pressured into MAID by a therapist highlight coercion fears, especially amid COVID isolation, where a Quebec politician absurdly suggested MAID for climate-concerned individuals. Gunn-Reed and Sterling argue policies risk normalizing death over hope, demanding Charter accountability and evidence-based debate to counter dystopian narratives. [Automatically generated summary]
Hello Rebels, you're listening to a free audio-only recording of my weekly Wednesday night show, The Gun Show.
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Cancel culture, climate change, and medical assistance in dying.
How do all these things tie in together?
Stay tuned and find out.
I'm Sheila Gunn-Reed, and you're watching The Gunn Show.
In 2018, a lawyer set himself on fire in a New York park to protest climate change.
Now, according to the BBC article at the time, a suicide note was found nearby and the deceased, one David Buckle, wrote that he had immolated himself using fossil fuel to symbolize what he said was the damage that human beings were doing to the earth.
Buckle said that most people now breathed bad air and died prematurely.
Now, to quote his suicide note directly, he wrote, pollution ravages our planet, oozing inhabitability via air, soil, water, and weather.
My early death by fossil fuel reflects what we are doing to ourselves.
This is not new as many have chosen to live a life based on the view that no other action can most meaningfully address the harm they see.
Buckle's death in 2018 was indeed tragic, a result, I would suggest, of the hopelessness and helplessness coupled with the sense of urgency peddled by the climate change movement.
You see, I think it's creating dangerous anxiety in vulnerable, sensitive people.
And now, with medical assistance in death, easier than ever to get, especially for young, depressed people, I think it's going to become an easy way out for people who are suffering this climate anxiety that society has infected them with and who are repeatedly told that humans are an invasive species on the planet.
Joining me tonight to discuss this very important issue from a very personal perspective is my friend Michelle Sterling from Friends of Science.
but she's also joining me to talk about a few other things as well, including her very recent presentation at Danny Hozack's Freedom Talk event in Lloyd Minster in an interview that we recorded yesterday morning.
And now this is where future Sheila, me right now, corrects past Sheila's mistakes.
In talking with Michelle yesterday morning, I said it was a virtual event, Danny Hozack's event, but it actually wasn't quite.
Danny was able to find a venue in Lloyd Minster that would host his event.
So keep that in mind when you're listening to me or watching me screw up that one detail in about 20 seconds from now.
take a listen.
Joining me now is my friend, Michelle Sterling from Friends of Science.
And first of all, there's a ton of things that we need to talk about.
There's so many things, both on, you know, just climate change issues, political issues, taxation issues, cancel culture, which more and more Friends of Science is becoming a victim of, and also the new medical assistance in dying legislation.
Michelle has a very personal anecdote that she would like to share.
But first, Michelle, I guess it would be, was it last week in the weekend before our friend Danny Hozack hosted another Freedom Talk event?
This one was virtual, but you had a talk there about the carbon tax and how paying taxes to the government isn't going to change the weather.
Fancy that as an idea.
Well, in the virtual talk, I talked about the mandate of the Minister of Climate Change and Environment.
He has two mandate letters, Jonathan Wilkinson.
And in both of them, the Prime Minister acknowledged that we should use the best available science and evidence and that we remain committed to evidence-based decision-making that takes into consideration the impacts of policies on all Canadians.
So those are two really key points.
And it also notes in the letter from 2019 that the minister must be, you know, have humility and continue to acknowledge mistakes when we make them.
Canadians do not expect us to be perfect.
They expect us to be diligent, honest, open, and sincere in our efforts to serve the public interest.
And in the rest of my talk, I go on to show that the best available science shows that we reached peak carbon in 2019.
And that doesn't mean there won't be any more emissions, but it does mean that we're not on any kind of catastrophic trend.
Reaching Peak Carbon00:15:45
And the problem is that there's this set of scenarios that's been used over and over again in the climate world called Representative Concentration Pathways, RCP.
And so there's like the RCP 8.5, there's 6.0, 4.5, and 2.6.
And this is the one that people keep saying is the business as usual one, which is not true.
And Roger PLK Jr. and Justin Ritchie out of BC have done an analysis of thousands of papers on Google Scholar showing that this catastrophic scenario is the one most referred to.
But in fact, the reality is that our emissions is more down here already.
This is the track that we're on.
And the very problematic part of this, and this is also associated with my conversation later about MAID, is these other scenarios, they're not comparable to this because these other scenarios have 3 billion fewer people in the equation, which might lead some people to think that we should depopulate the earth to save the planet.
I want you to think very, very carefully about that, everyone.
because this is what the finance community is looking at.
This is what banks are looking at.
This is what pension funds are looking at.
And they want to get down here to net zero.
And that means for some of those people, they think more people should be gone from this planet.
And really, when these people say more people should be gone from this planet, they don't mean them, their friends, their yachting buddies.
They mean people like you and me.
Well, you know, people have become dispensable now that sort of the great reset viewpoint that artificial intelligence will take over, that people will be redundant, that all these jobs will disappear because robots can do them.
And that, you know, many of the people who we all value, the people we love, who may be difficult people, they may be in difficult circumstances.
They may be elderly.
They may have dementia.
They might be vulnerable people.
They might be quite sick.
You know, these kind of mechanical computations about who should be on the planet would say theoretically they should not be on the planet.
They're just useless consumers of material goods that the elite would prefer for themselves.
So there are very, very deep philosophical and religious and spiritual issues associated now with climate change and with the Great Reset.
You know, I'm glad that you used the word religious because there's a certain religious fervor that comes along with the proponents of limiting the amount of people who are allowed to be born and who are allowed to live on the face of the earth to deal with climate change because it does have its own very distinct set of values that are incompatible with mine, that's for sure.
And, you know, we are treated as human beings by, you know, that side of the argument as though we are an invasive species doing something terrible to the earth by producing carbon dioxide, which takes me to Bill C-12, which you talked about a little bit in your talk at Freedom Talk, because that's the pursuit of net zero emissions,
and it's going to be legislated now instead of just a goal.
And we're not seeing a lot of pushback from the conservative side of the aisle on this.
In fact, a lot of the language we see Aaron O'Toole using this net zero language also.
Yes, well, Bill C-12 is something that's been promoted by the major environmental law groups in Canada and environmental groups.
The main groups behind it are CANRAC, which is a group, a network of over 100 ENGOs in Canada and unions, Equitaire, Pembeday Institute, EcoJustice, and West Coast Environmental Law.
In addition to the people behind it, there's a letter from 28 law professors from various universities.
Five of those professors are from the UFC who have been promoting this climate accountability law.
And so that's what Bill C-12 is really all about, is trying to force the government to make a law that they have to meet these targets.
Now, the rationale for this is that over the past 30 years, Canada has not met any of its proposed Kyoto or Paris Agreement targets.
And there's quite a good reason for that.
First of all, there is no technology that would allow us to go to net zero.
But in the meantime, we've gone, we've increased our population 37% in that time.
But you'll find that we're pretty much flatlined in terms of growth of greenhouse gas emissions.
So that's actually a good thing.
Like people should be rejoicing and saying, wow, look at that, 37% more people who need transportation, a house, food, heating in winter, lighting so that they can read and do their Zoom calls.
And yet we hardly grew any emissions whatsoever.
We must be way more efficient in Canada.
Fantastic.
But no, they want to impose this law.
And this will, first of all, will allow the government to then justify the horribly intrusive and detrimental laws and implications that would come from this law.
Because they'd say, oh, well, if we don't make you people poor, then we're going to be in court with these law ENGOs.
And it also is kind of like expanded ambulance chasing for these ENGOs.
You know, it gives them complete opportunity to take the government or perhaps any individual or company to court any day of the week saying, well, new, no, no, you know, you didn't meet your climate accountability requirements.
Therefore, we're going to sue you.
So the ultimate in ENGO ambulance chasing.
But I discussed some of the practical outcomes of this at Freedom Talk.
And these come from Robert Lyman, who was a public servant for 27 years and a diplomat for 10 years.
And some of the things that Robert indicated would happen, the Canadian dollar might go to 60 cents.
The cost of a house would have $100,000 added to it.
The price of diesel, gasoline, propane would double or triple.
Electricity prices would double or triple.
There would be more blackouts and brownouts.
Life would become pretty much intolerable for ordinary people.
Very, very expensive.
And there would be mass migration from Alberta because most of the oil and gas production in Canada would have to be shut down, as would all of the big manufacturing industries like steel, cement, any of these, some of the mining industries.
So it's ironic that on the one hand we have Minister O'Reagan saying, oh look, we're going to be a world leader in mining, which is a very intensive emissions operation.
And on the other hand, trying to implement this law that would basically shut down all mining.
So, you know, that's kind of a long diatribe on my part, but it's a very serious bill with serious implications.
And the Paris Agreement is entirely voluntary.
We are doing this to ourselves.
You know, it is an act of national suicide, actually.
Well, and that's the thing.
It was voluntary, but this looks to legislate it into law, really, and put hard targets on things.
And so I know what the liberals are all about.
I expect the conservatives to sort of stand in the way of all those things.
So when back when the vote was whipped by the Conservative Party for them to support the Paris Accord, I was outraged at the time and they said, oh no, no, Sheila, don't worry.
These are simply voluntary targets.
They were at the time, but now how do you oppose them when they're written into law when you stood up and whipped your caucus into supporting them when they were just voluntary targets?
You can't have it both ways.
Either you agree with these targets or you don't.
And it sounds to me like they do.
And ultimately, at the end of the day, as you rightly point out, it is Alberta, as it always tends to be, that ends up on the receiving end of these bad ideas.
Well, we'll have the biggest hit from them.
But honestly, you know, Robert Lyman has another report about climate and rural Canada that was issued a couple of years ago.
And he talks about the Aluminiere factory in Quebec and two other big operations there.
There's an iron ore operation, which I don't remember the name.
Anyway, I can send you that information.
And those will be hit too.
And these are operations and industries that serve a very large community of rural workers who won't have jobs and there won't be other options for them.
So it's going to hit Alberta worst, partly because we're landlocked, partly because oil and gas is a big sector, partly because agriculture is a big sector.
But it's going to hit everything in Canada.
And for no benefit.
You know, that's another thing that I showed in my presentation, that if this is from Bjorn Laurenberg, if all of the countries met all of their targets, you know, the resulting reduction in warming would be 17 one hundredths of a degree Celsius.
And it would cost one to two trillion dollars a year.
So obviously this is just a money laundering scheme for green cronies and has really nothing to do with the environment and everything to do with turning you into a carbon serf.
You know, that's something I really feel like I should put on a t-shirt.
Carbon surf.
Yeah.
Something that maybe clients should consider.
We have a video and report.
It's slightly outdated, but still the principles are true called carbon kleptomania.
Because as we've seen already, once you implement a carbon tax, government just can't keep its hands off it.
And there's ever more reasons why they can come up with, oh, well, we know we said it would never go above $50, but now it's going to go up to $170 and there's nothing you can do about it because we're the government.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Although, you know, if we go back to the minister's mandate, it says that he should use the best available science and evidence.
And we found, I just showed you, that actually they've been on the wrong track using this RCP 8.5 as business as usual.
He also says in the mandate letter that we should make, you know, be willing to admit our mistakes and that we have to defend the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms and consider the impacts on all Canadians.
So, you know, that's not being done.
And I think that we should call the minister to account on these very elements that are in his mandate letters from the prime minister.
I agree with you, but then who holds him to account?
Justin Trudeau?
Well, really.
Prime Minister's letter.
So we should hold them both to account.
Definitely.
I agree with you.
Now, you mentioned Robert Lyman once already, but as you rightly point out, while the Western world pursues net zero economies, the developing world is developing.
And that is a very carbon intensive thing.
And I'm glad that they're developing.
And Robert Lyman's new report, The Real World of Greenhouse Gas Emissions, rightly points out that 60% of the world population is from a developing nation where they are completely ignoring Paris targets.
And I'm happy they are because I think everybody should live in some form of health and prosperity.
Yes.
Well, his latest report is called When Giants Arise.
And then you read the subtitle, which is correct.
That, you know, the giants are really South Asia, that being China, all of the smaller nations associated with the Asian region, and India.
And I believe in Robert Lyman's report, Promises versus Performance, up to 2019, China's emissions had grown 28%, and India's had grown 69%.
So, you know, there's massive growth in these areas where they have, you know, a couple of billion people, most of whom don't have central heating, central lighting, central sanitation facilities, pumped water.
So these nations are not going to stand by and play climate change bingo, you know, with the West.
They're going to forge ahead and create their own new societies while we dicker with each other about whether or not we're going to impose a carbon tax here or a climate accountability law there.
So we'll be crushed and broke, and they will be surging ahead because they are giants and we are nothing.
So this actually makes the whole climate conversation totally absurd.
Just the report, you see how absurd it all is.
Right.
Then over half of the world's population is saying, no, no thanks to these ideas.
How do we just say, okay, well, we're just going to shut down our economies and hope that that's enough to offset the immense growth that's happening in the developing world.
It doesn't make any sense.
Right.
And some people might say, well, no, you know, China and India both signed on to the Paris Agreement.
So did other countries.
That's true.
They did.
And why?
Because the West said to them, you know what, we're going to write you a check every year for $100 billion from our pockets to you with no accountability.
Grid Instability in Texas00:05:02
You can do anything you want with it.
And again, this is kind of a money laundering scheme because what the actual idea is that, okay, we'll give you money, but you buy our wind turbines.
You know, actually, the late Professor Dr. Istan Marco wrote a great post one time, which is on our blog in French and English, where he compared it to a climate trade fair.
That's what all these COPs are about.
So, you know, you go to the COP, the Conference of the Parties, the Climate Conference, and Germany, for instance, would say, boy, India, you should really get into renewables.
And India says, well, we don't have any money.
And they go, well, we'll give you $2 billion, but you have to buy our wind farm.
You know, so this is what it's like.
It's this horse trading, money laundering thing that does nothing for the climate.
And it's just scaring people to death here in terms of children and many of the climate activists.
They're terrified that the world will end with really this commercial transaction happening in the background.
Terrible.
And I think we've seen the end sustainability of green energy when it runs up against Mother Nature unfolding in Texas.
When Texas got swamped with a snowstorm, they lost power, they lost heating, grocery stores were losing enormous amounts of food, even if you could get to food because the electricity was down and their freezers were failing.
And from what I understand, a lot of that had to do with not Texas policies because they're obviously pro-energy, but during the Obama years, green energy companies were incentivized to build onto the grid and it made the grid unreliable as we've seen in Texas.
Now, on a day-to-day basis, you don't necessarily, when things are good, it's good.
But that's not when you really need electricity.
You need it when things are bad and it failed there.
That's right.
And well, first of all, Texas had the most subsidies ever for wind.
And those subsidies came from all taxpayers in the U.S.
And Texas also shut down three coal plants.
And, you know, you have to plan for the worst scenario and you have to have reserve power that's sufficient to stand those tests.
And a lot of things that happened, they started electrifying, you know, decarbonizing homes and decarbonizing some of the pumps for some of the natural gas and such like by using electricity.
So, you know, when you have a power drop and a cold temperature moves in, you know, cold front moves in, of course, everyone's going to turn up their power and draw more electricity, which puts more strain on the grid.
And if you don't have those backup reserves of reliable power, dispatchable power, you know, power that you can turn up and say, okay, we need more coal power, we need more nuclear, we need more natural gas.
If you don't have that reserve available, then things fall apart.
And wind had been like actually a very great performer for Texas for a long time.
But there is a graph showing that there was a drop off of 40% wind, which was taken up by the natural gas supply right after that.
But that kind of immediate loss is very hard on grid stability.
And there are some reports saying that whatever the grid managers did at the time saved them from going to total blackout.
Like I think it's called a black start operation.
Very hard to get the grid back up again if you ever encounter that.
So, you know, this is catastrophic for a Western society to have that level of unreliability.
Yeah.
Yeah.
In an energy-rich state.
I think that's the scariest part is that's how, you know, like you would think, you know, something hits Texas, they're going to be fine.
But when you insert this unreliability into a completely reliable grid, I mean, the ramifications are devastating.
Yeah.
Well, you can look at Venezuela.
A very similar thing happened there.
Yeah.
They didn't keep their conventional power up to snuff.
They had problems with the El Nemia, or sorry, the ENSO in the drop of water in the dam.
They started losing energy.
They started going to a four-day week, three-day a week because they didn't have enough electrical power and then everything fell apart.
So, and that's one of, that's the richest oil state in the world.
So it can happen anywhere.
It can happen here.
Tar Sands Campaign Impact00:04:29
Now, you mentioned very briefly about this sort of fear and climate anxiety that people are experiencing.
And we've seen articles written, I think, in The Guardian and in some other places about this growing climate anxiety in young children.
So if it's festering in young children, obviously it's being transmitted to them.
They're being infected by the adults around them.
And one of the things I like about the Friends of Science YouTube page is you sort of do things to alleviate the anxiety, telling people to step back, calm down.
Let's look at the facts.
It's not as scary as it really is.
And you actually had a poster that was accepted to, I'll let you tell the whole story, but it was, you became a victim of cancel culture because your poster that talked about this idea of anxiety and fear around the climate, it was squashed.
And I guess it was because of the topic, I think.
Well, it's hard to know exactly why it was canceled.
What happened is last spring, the Canadian Mental Health Association for Alberta proposed a conference that would have been in November of this past year.
And it's about working together and it was about workplace resiliency.
It was about inclusion.
It was about looking at people who might be feeling suicidal on the job and how to address that, providing some skills along the way.
So I proposed a topic that was about indoctrination and delegitimization about the Alberta, particularly the Alberta oil sands workforce and related supply chain, where, you know, people not only had a tremendous job loss in a very short period of time and all the other socioeconomic conditions that go with that, which may be divorce, financial stress, bankruptcy, and sadly suicide.
But they also are being delegitimized by the tar sands campaign.
You know, the tar sands campaign has very successfully driven a rift between sort of the green people of Canada and the real hands-on energy workers of Canada.
So not only are they losing their jobs, they're continuing to be humiliated by people who call them, you know, dirty tar sands workers or, you know, that's a retirement feel.
Nobody uses fossil fuels anymore when the evidence is completely to the contrary.
So that was the proposal that, you know, we should recognize that the tar sands campaign has layered this humiliation on top of these very real losses of jobs and such like.
So they didn't accept the option of a paper, but they did accept the option of a poster.
And so I put together a poster and it was accepted.
And the day before the conference, I looked online.
There it was.
There are five posters.
There, mine was the fifth.
And the day of the conference, it was gone.
So I asked the organizer to please repost it.
There was silence for a while.
And to her credit, she did write back and say, yes, there was some controversy about your poster.
So we had to take it down.
And And I thought, you know, honest to God, they don't know that thousands of people in Alberta who work in this industry are suffering deeply, not only from job loss, but from being ostracized and being ostracized on false claims, in addition, of climate change.
You know, Bill McGibbon just had an interview with Linda Solomon Wood of the National Observer, and he called the oil sands a carbon bomb, which is baloney.
And Bill McGibbon's not an engineer.
He's not a geoscientist.
He's not a scientist or a climate scientist of any kind.
He's an activist who's been funded by the Rockefellers.
And they're running, if you've read the Nemuth reports, they're part and parcel of this huge anti-fossil fuel movement in the world, transnational progressive movement.
The Human Side of Care00:14:42
But they have no idea how the world works.
The world runs on energy.
And so, you know, it was really a shock to me that an organization that proposes to help people to alleviate the suffering of people who may be suicidal, who are suffering bankruptcy, who are being humiliated or bullied by the world, which Alberta is, and who claim to be inclusive, cut me out when I was defending the people of Alberta.
I think it's really actually, I think it's sick.
I think that they need help.
It's true.
I mean, we've all heard stories about the devastation in the Alberta coal mines, the, you know, the grief of the workers knowing that their jobs are ending simply because of a government policy.
We've seen the spikes in suicides in towns like Hanna.
And, you know, to completely cut them out of the equation because the industry they work for has been demonized the way you rightly point out.
How does that help them?
If that's truly your concern is to help people having mental health challenges and suicide, how does it help them if you completely disregard their suffering based on the jobs that they do?
Right.
And this goes back to a book by Maria Hoda and her colleagues back in the 1930s called Marienthal, which was a town in Austria.
You know, this kind of socioeconomic research on job loss goes back to that time when she went to this town of Marienthal where the entire town, it was a factory town, the entire town lost their jobs.
And she and her colleagues studied the effects of this on the population.
It was devastating.
And that's the same kind of thing that many Albertans experience today.
And it's not just within the family that lost the job.
You know, it's the whole extended family.
It's the children.
It's when children go to school and they're mocked and accused of being planet killers because their parents work in oil or gas or oil sands.
You know, this is a terrible, terrible thing that's happening to a great province and a great people.
Well, I think that's a great place for us to move into.
I guess a personal story that you shared with me that you're willing to share with everybody else.
And that is with regard to medical assistance in dying.
That's the latest Bill C7.
And the liberals have shoehorned a bunch of really terrible things into this legislation.
People with mental illness can now seek medical assistance in dying.
It sounds like minors now can seek this without the consent of their parents, very little family involvement.
And you have a personal story about this.
And so, you know, when we were talking off camera, I found your concerns very compelling because this is something that your family has gone through.
Yes, my late brother, Glenn Sterling, was a very well-known chiropractor in Alberta and British Columbia.
And he was a health and fitness buff all his life.
He was a marathon runner, ultra-marathon runner.
He helped thousands of people to have better health.
And in 2016, he had been working overseas and he returned home and we knew that there was something wrong with him.
He often would fall down.
He looked like he had a stroke.
You know, he was quite impassive in his face.
But we didn't know what was wrong.
So he went through a number of tests and we found that he was suffering from what's called PSP, parasupranuclear palsy, a progressive parasupranuclear palsy, which is a very aggressive form of Parkinson's, a cousin of Parkinson's.
So at the time, medical assistance in dying, or MAID, as it's called, had just become part of the legislation in Alberta.
And he ultimately opted for that.
But before that, I want to say that Alberta Health Services offered him the best care ever.
They gave him very, probably a 12-week program, I think it was, at the Schumer Center, where they taught him some balance techniques.
They worked with him on like occupational therapy.
They had a social worker there who met with him and with the family members to try and help him address these issues of declining health.
But ultimately, he just didn't want to go on.
He was falling down more and more.
It became, oh, we had also great, great neuroscientists and doctors at the Foothills Hospital.
So he was falling down more and more.
He was very humiliated because his gait was quite staggered.
His speech was slurred.
So often he would get kicked out of a store because they thought that he was drunk when he was not and he couldn't even defend himself because he couldn't speak properly anymore.
So he opted for MAID.
He requested MAID.
But that was no guarantee that he would get it.
So we had to go through many counseling sessions with social workers, with psychologists, with the physician who agreed to assist him in dying.
And all along the way, the intent was to help him live.
The intent was to verify whether or not he actually really wanted this or was he being coerced in some way or could he find another way forward.
They all wanted to help him live is my point.
And once the system had concluded a number of these meetings, many of these meetings, you know, they recognized that no, he actually really didn't want to live like this anymore.
And they granted him the medical assistance in dying and they gave him a very, very dignified death.
And I was there with him.
And I have to say it's somewhat contrary to the human desire.
You always want someone to live.
But I understood that he wanted to die.
And my concern now is that in a time of COVID when people are very lonely and isolated, when they can't actually go and meet with physicians and all these counselors, when we're strapped for cash, when many people are now being deemed to be quite inconvenient by the medical system, I'm not saying the health care providers, but say the insurance companies, the pension plans, the people who have to pay the tab.
I think that it will just be a very convenient way to push people off a cliff and they'll never have the kind of care and attention that my brother had.
And that's my concern is that, you know, we really don't have the money to do that kind of detailed work with people anymore.
So I can imagine in a nursing home where someone will say, well, we have jazzercise next week on Tuesday.
And oh, by the way, the doctor's coming in to do MAID on Thursday.
Would you like me to sign you up?
I mean, that sounds very crass and cool, but cruel.
But when you look at what's happened in Belgium and Holland, where medical assistance in dying has become quite accessible, I was telling you the story that Rachel Aviv wrote in the New Yorker called The Death Treatment.
And it's about how this woman who was probably in her 60s, empty nester, and had suffered from mild depression all her life, but had been functional and no huge suffering.
Somehow she encountered a therapist who convinced her that she should do herself in and take medical assistance in dying.
The family was not brought in to talk with her.
The son got an email saying, by the way, you know, your mom's dead and here's why.
After the fact, of course.
So it's a very slippery slope.
I think it's a terrible, terrible initiative.
And, you know, we just celebrated or celebrated, we just recognized a death of vulnerable persons by their caregivers about two weeks ago.
So just imagine now with MAID, where someone who's in a position where they have few finances, little social support, little health care support could very easily coerce a vulnerable person into making this choice.
You know, Michelle, you've never shared that story with me before, but it sure does explain the tone of some of the videos over on the Friends of Science Facebook page or on the YouTube page where you are telling people, calm down.
It's not that bad.
The world isn't going to end.
There will be another tomorrow.
The sun will come up tomorrow and there's hope.
There's hope.
And, you know, you've taken this, as you do with everything, with climate change and with, you know, carbon taxes.
And now with this, you see the human side of things.
And I appreciate that so much.
And I am myself very disturbed by the Liberals Bill C7 because I think there are people out there who are doing great work to help people during their darkest times.
And I think for many people, right now is their darkest time.
Yes, it is.
There's joblessness, there's isolation.
We've heard stories of grandparents who are isolated in these facilities opting for MAID because they're so isolated and alone.
And it's just, you know, I think there are people working hard every day hearing the stories of people on the other end of a suicide hotline.
Why aren't we trying to help people in their darkest times instead of agreeing that there is no better days ahead?
I think it's just a terrible message to send to society.
Right.
And, you know, there is a Quebec politician who has even suggested within the past year that if people are concerned about climate change, then they should take themselves out.
You know, they should have the right to this kind of medical assistance and dying.
Like that's absurd.
That's horrible.
Because now we have a generation of children who've been beaten on the head that you don't have a future, only 12 years left.
That's baloney.
That's just not true at all.
Again, it's going back to this stupid, you know, RCP 8.5, we're all going to die graph.
When the reality is down here, this is the reality.
We're not going to get there.
So, you know, you have children who already, and young adults who already face many challenges in life, thinking of this dystopian future, you know, why even go on?
Because if I'm not going to get to be an adult, because I only have 12 years left, why not end it all now?
Well, you know, the way that this bill is written and the way the slippery slope is, some of these kids might end up being victims of this bill.
You know, and I mean, a case like my brother's, where somebody is obviously terminally ill and they're not going to be able to be helped.
You know, there are many people who would say, well, that's a fair choice.
You know, others would reject it because of faith reasons.
But I think that it can be valid because I know that my brother didn't want to go on.
But honestly, for a young person, you know, to be caught in this drama of a dystopian future, and God forbid that Greta ever becomes like the Pied Piper of Hamlet.
You know, this is what I foresee as the risk to society.
It's a dark place to end the show, Michelle, but you are trying to shine a light on where all of this goes, this idea of humans as this invasive species that the world is going to end.
You do a lot to break that down and calm some of those fears and anxiety.
So how do people support the very important work that you're doing to take the hysteria out of the conversation?
Well, on Friends of Science main website, there is a membership and a donate button.
You can also share any of our videos or our reports on your social media.
We're on all social media except TikTok.
So maybe we'll be there one day.
But, you know, just a pitch in and we don't want you to agree with us.
We want you to be willing to open the debate.
That's it.
We're looking for open civil debate and full cost benefit analysis.
And we're looking for the minister to actually stand by his mandate, according to these letters that uses evidence-based decision-making to take into consideration the impacts of policies on all Canadians and fully defend the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms.
And that Canadians do not expect us to be perfect.
They expect us to be diligent, honest, open, and sincere in our efforts to serve the public interest.
So I think that we should hold the minister and the prime minister to account on those things.
I do too, Michelle.
I'm sorry to leave on such a sad note, but again, I think it is such important work that you're doing to inject facts into this conversation that is so overwhelmed by gloom and doom and anxiety and fear.
Hey, Hey Change Your Mind00:02:44
Michelle, we'll have you back on the show again real soon.
I can send you our climate song, which came from Europe, and it offers a cheerful note.
So maybe you can put that at the end of the show.
I would love that.
Thank you so much, Michelle.
Thank you, Tina.
Climate's overchanging now and forevermore.
So be no one fool.
Your question is cool.
Oh, yeah.
So be on the right team.
Don't go in the mainstream.
Hey, when searching the truth, changing your mind and be the one for the future.
Hey, hey, you can change your mind and find out what's really going on.
Hey, we've been fine.
Don't swim in the sea or confusion.
Hey, hey, so don't be scared.
You take just an illusion.
Hey, hey.
La-na-na-na.
La-na-na-na-na.
Thanks, everybody, for hanging in there.
And I realize the show today went a little longer than it normally does, but I thought that it was very important to hear Michelle's very personal perspective on medical assistance in dying, having gone through the entire process from beginning to end in the past with her brother.
I worry that people with anxiety, this anxiety that society has infected them with, are not going to get the real help that they need to go on.
Well, everybody, that's the show for tonight.
Thank you so much for tuning in.
I'll see everybody back here or maybe not back here in the same time next week.