Excellent as always. One small point on death. In the last five years we buried both my mother in law and my mom. Both died of cancer, and both died at home.
Sadly I witnessed my fare share of family dieing in this manner. I will go on the record here and say unequivocally that if anyone thinks that prolonging the suffering of another human being, to what amounts to a death by thousands of drips, that person either lacks empathy, morality, or carries traits of being a sadist. All the above are not mutually exclusive.
Deirdre, I spent a week in the hospital while my mom was undergoing some treatments. I saw some of the ugly side the horrible side of some patients
" lives" try and justify that with what some politicians like to portray Canada as a Just and Caring society or Caring country.
You have my sympathies, Mark. For me it was an uncle and Grandmother; both cancer. It’s so hard. Nana passed away within a couple of days of sedation but my uncle was closer to two weeks after.
So much material, so little time. According I’ll make comment on one section only. MAID
Pierre Elliot Trudeau (you may know him Dani as T2’s father) rightly said decades ago. “ “There’s no place for the State in the bedrooms of the Nation”*
Today there is no place in the end of life medical decisions of the individual for the State.
You, Mrs David Smith Moretta and all of your sycophants north and south of the medicine line do not occupy any moral high ground here.
You and your Talibangelicals with their White Jesus Prosperity Bible alt right bent certainly do not occupy a moral nor an ethical high ground. In fact it should be considered by those who believe in Christian values that you have forsaken those teachings in your self interests.
So to paraphrase Trudeau - STFU , and to paraphrase you Stay in your own lane.
*origin of the quote maybe Martin O’Malley from the Globe and Mail ““…It has no right or duty to creep into the bedrooms of the nation.”
Thank you, Bill, for expressing what I too believe. It becomes tyrannical when there is no separation of church and state in government. And, of course, it has zero to do with morality. It is done to exercise power and control.
I’ve posted before on the subject, but I’ll again offer some perspective on the idea that we sell our crude “at a discount”.
Crude oil is essentially priced based on 3 variables. Yield, contaminants, and logistics. When people refer to “heavy” or “light” this refers to the density as measured in API. Heavy crudes have low API and light crudes have high API. A heavy low API crude will yield a relatively low amount of high value product (gasoline, jet fuel, diesel) at a refinery without investing in expensive and aggressive further processing. This added capital and processing cost means heavy crude is simply worth less and is thus priced lower.
Similarly, quality contaminants like sulfur and nitrogen, or characteristics of synthetic crude in general, further reduce the price as they necessitate more aggressive treating and more capital cost to process.
Logistics discounts are a function of term contracts, distance, shipping method, and optionality. Canadian crude reaches US refinery destinations by ship, pipeline, truck and rail. What a refiner cares about is the price of a barrel at its fence line. They couldn’t really care less about the specific price at the wellhead. So a barrel that has difficulty logistics to get to that refiner, will be worth less to that refiner unless the cost of the logistics is factored into price at the refinery. If our pipelines are at capacity, then incremental barrels produced will be sold at a discount as they are effectively stranded. But this only applies to the incremental stranded barrel and not every other barrel that is traveling south. So it’s a misnomer to say our pipeline capacity results in us selling discounted crude. Only those incremental barrels will be subject to sell at a discount. So it’s therefore critical to be “terming” your barrels to ensure you have a spot in the pipeline.
A good analogy is that we are selling Nissans and not Ferraris. And these are used Nissans with rust and dings that are being shipped a great distance. So these are Nissans that are simply selling for what they are worth. Which is very different than a discounted Ferrari.
Smith's desire for top secret security clearance is highly suspicious. There is NOTHING about her behaviour that would pass the test and that's only her 'public' behaviour. 'Trust' is a word foreign to her.
The latest of Danielle Smith’s sticking her nose into people's personal and private lives has me irate. She and her loud voter base talk constantly about less government interference when it comes to the federal government, then Smith interferes with their progressive policies setting the clock back somewhere between 15 and 50 years. The right to die when and how we choose is one of the most humane human rights we will ever have. As a retired nurse, I've sat with many people at the end of life. I watched too many die long, horrible deaths praying to God to take them. Already as a student nurse I thought there had to be a better way that made end of life easier on the person and easier on their family members who take turns sitting with the chronically ill, and cancer patients often day and night.
No one knows the hell people with chronic severe depression live in, when every day becomes a struggle to get out of bed. Personal hygiene is too much work. Eating is optional and nothing is of interest anymore except dying. Yes, people with Chronic depression can be saved and are saved when they attempt suicide, but what if they've tried every existing treatment along with extensive counseling with no noticeable improvement and they genuinely don't want to be saved anymore? Do we have the right to deny them MAID? I don't think we should have that right especially since there are safeguards in place before MAID is approved.
The notion of MAID for infants and minors is even more contentious than it is for people with severe mental illness. Many of us can't get past the concept of ending a newborns, toddler's or a child's life. At face value it horrifies many of us to where MAID seems like murder when it comes to minors. But no parents I've ever encountered would choose MAID for their child unless there was daily pain and suffering with the severest of mental and/or physical disabilities, or if the newborn was diagnosed with a congenital anomaly that would be untreatable and terminal within days, weeks, or months. Again, there are safeguards in place to prevent mistakes. Doctors referrals and reports are necessary before approval of MAID for minors whose parents make the decisions for them.
U see no reason for Danielle Smith to legislate who can and can't access MAID when there already federal government safeguards in place. Once again Smith instructs every other level of government to stay in their own lane while she criss-crosses over and into everyone else's lanes.
t's a choice whether to die with or without medical assistance in dying.
Excellent as always. One small point on death. In the last five years we buried both my mother in law and my mom. Both died of cancer, and both died at home.
Sadly I witnessed my fare share of family dieing in this manner. I will go on the record here and say unequivocally that if anyone thinks that prolonging the suffering of another human being, to what amounts to a death by thousands of drips, that person either lacks empathy, morality, or carries traits of being a sadist. All the above are not mutually exclusive.
Deirdre, I spent a week in the hospital while my mom was undergoing some treatments. I saw some of the ugly side the horrible side of some patients
" lives" try and justify that with what some politicians like to portray Canada as a Just and Caring society or Caring country.
You have my sympathies, Mark. For me it was an uncle and Grandmother; both cancer. It’s so hard. Nana passed away within a couple of days of sedation but my uncle was closer to two weeks after.
So much material, so little time. According I’ll make comment on one section only. MAID
Pierre Elliot Trudeau (you may know him Dani as T2’s father) rightly said decades ago. “ “There’s no place for the State in the bedrooms of the Nation”*
Today there is no place in the end of life medical decisions of the individual for the State.
You, Mrs David Smith Moretta and all of your sycophants north and south of the medicine line do not occupy any moral high ground here.
You and your Talibangelicals with their White Jesus Prosperity Bible alt right bent certainly do not occupy a moral nor an ethical high ground. In fact it should be considered by those who believe in Christian values that you have forsaken those teachings in your self interests.
So to paraphrase Trudeau - STFU , and to paraphrase you Stay in your own lane.
*origin of the quote maybe Martin O’Malley from the Globe and Mail ““…It has no right or duty to creep into the bedrooms of the nation.”
Thank you, Bill, for expressing what I too believe. It becomes tyrannical when there is no separation of church and state in government. And, of course, it has zero to do with morality. It is done to exercise power and control.
I’ve posted before on the subject, but I’ll again offer some perspective on the idea that we sell our crude “at a discount”.
Crude oil is essentially priced based on 3 variables. Yield, contaminants, and logistics. When people refer to “heavy” or “light” this refers to the density as measured in API. Heavy crudes have low API and light crudes have high API. A heavy low API crude will yield a relatively low amount of high value product (gasoline, jet fuel, diesel) at a refinery without investing in expensive and aggressive further processing. This added capital and processing cost means heavy crude is simply worth less and is thus priced lower.
Similarly, quality contaminants like sulfur and nitrogen, or characteristics of synthetic crude in general, further reduce the price as they necessitate more aggressive treating and more capital cost to process.
Logistics discounts are a function of term contracts, distance, shipping method, and optionality. Canadian crude reaches US refinery destinations by ship, pipeline, truck and rail. What a refiner cares about is the price of a barrel at its fence line. They couldn’t really care less about the specific price at the wellhead. So a barrel that has difficulty logistics to get to that refiner, will be worth less to that refiner unless the cost of the logistics is factored into price at the refinery. If our pipelines are at capacity, then incremental barrels produced will be sold at a discount as they are effectively stranded. But this only applies to the incremental stranded barrel and not every other barrel that is traveling south. So it’s a misnomer to say our pipeline capacity results in us selling discounted crude. Only those incremental barrels will be subject to sell at a discount. So it’s therefore critical to be “terming” your barrels to ensure you have a spot in the pipeline.
A good analogy is that we are selling Nissans and not Ferraris. And these are used Nissans with rust and dings that are being shipped a great distance. So these are Nissans that are simply selling for what they are worth. Which is very different than a discounted Ferrari.
I should probably take you up on that offer to explain it better so I stop making this "too simple by far" statement :)
Smith's desire for top secret security clearance is highly suspicious. There is NOTHING about her behaviour that would pass the test and that's only her 'public' behaviour. 'Trust' is a word foreign to her.
Bingo.
The latest of Danielle Smith’s sticking her nose into people's personal and private lives has me irate. She and her loud voter base talk constantly about less government interference when it comes to the federal government, then Smith interferes with their progressive policies setting the clock back somewhere between 15 and 50 years. The right to die when and how we choose is one of the most humane human rights we will ever have. As a retired nurse, I've sat with many people at the end of life. I watched too many die long, horrible deaths praying to God to take them. Already as a student nurse I thought there had to be a better way that made end of life easier on the person and easier on their family members who take turns sitting with the chronically ill, and cancer patients often day and night.
No one knows the hell people with chronic severe depression live in, when every day becomes a struggle to get out of bed. Personal hygiene is too much work. Eating is optional and nothing is of interest anymore except dying. Yes, people with Chronic depression can be saved and are saved when they attempt suicide, but what if they've tried every existing treatment along with extensive counseling with no noticeable improvement and they genuinely don't want to be saved anymore? Do we have the right to deny them MAID? I don't think we should have that right especially since there are safeguards in place before MAID is approved.
The notion of MAID for infants and minors is even more contentious than it is for people with severe mental illness. Many of us can't get past the concept of ending a newborns, toddler's or a child's life. At face value it horrifies many of us to where MAID seems like murder when it comes to minors. But no parents I've ever encountered would choose MAID for their child unless there was daily pain and suffering with the severest of mental and/or physical disabilities, or if the newborn was diagnosed with a congenital anomaly that would be untreatable and terminal within days, weeks, or months. Again, there are safeguards in place to prevent mistakes. Doctors referrals and reports are necessary before approval of MAID for minors whose parents make the decisions for them.
U see no reason for Danielle Smith to legislate who can and can't access MAID when there already federal government safeguards in place. Once again Smith instructs every other level of government to stay in their own lane while she criss-crosses over and into everyone else's lanes.
t's a choice whether to die with or without medical assistance in dying.