Canada

Canadians with cancer spend an average $33K out of pocket for medical care: report

During her cancer treatment, Vanessa Percoco felt forced to choose between paying to feel better or making rent.

Percoco, 33, of Laval, Que., worked in special education and had just started on a short contract working with some Grade 3 students with special needs. A diagnosis of advanced colorectal cancer in 2022 put those plans on hold.

During more than two years of treatment, which included surgery to remove part of the colon as well as 12 rounds of chemotherapy, Percoco paid more than $4,000 out of pocket for prescription drugs, including medications to cope with the side-effects and complications. On top of that, there were costs for colostomy bags, which she had to restock every four days, bandages, physiotherapy sessions and osteopathic consultations, as well as travel and parking.

Parking alone is onerous as anyone who has ever had to make multiple visits will attest. Having to travel long distance for care must be torture.

Hospitals do offer discounted parking passes, some deals are better than others.

Having a chemo-patient take the TTC is not a humane or even a sensible option given compromised immune systems.

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by Blazingcatfur••0•Posted inCanada

Canadian Karens about to recommend Americans be limited to TWO beers a week.

How Americans could be advised to drink maximum of two beers per WEEK under new guidelines

Americans could soon be urged to drink no more than two bottles of beer per week under new guidelines being drawn up by the federal government.

Two researchers who contributed to Canada’s controversial two-drink recommendation in 2023 have been quietly advising the US on its new alcohol policies set to be unveiled next year.

Dr Tim Naimi and Dr Kevin Shields are both listed as advisers on a scientific review panel that will inform the new 2026 US Dietary guidelines.

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by Blazingcatfur••0•Posted inCanada, USA, WTF?

Cory Morgan: Canada Must Act at Once to Fix Immigration, Border Security and Avoid US Tariffs

President-elect Donald Trump brought Canada’s porous border with the United States into focus when he threatened to impose 25 percent tariffs on Canadian goods if the border isn’t brought under control. While immigrants and drugs aren’t passing into the USA from Canada in volumes like those crossing at the Mexican border, the United States has valid concerns with its northern neighbour. Terror suspects are the most troublesome export crossing into the United States from Canada.

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by Blazingcatfur••0•Posted inCanada, USA

THOMSON: It’s not Trump Derangement Syndrome, Canadians just aren’t very big on self esteem

“Show me on this map where the mean orange man hurt you, Canada.”

That is what our country’s top clinical psychiatrists should be asking Canadians, based on their reactions to President-elect Trump’s posts on social media.

You have to wonder, why is Canada’s ego so fragile? It’s a question sociologists will have to study in the years following Donald Trump’s second presidency, because never in our history has the election of a foreign head of state so immediately, completely and inexorably, thrown our country into such a fluster of existential hysteria.

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by Blazingcatfur••0•Posted inCanada, USA

‘We don’t know what comes’ into Canada by rail, border union head says

Canada’s border services agency has no infrastructure in place to search trains for drugs, people and other goods crossing illegally into the country by rail, the head of the border agents’ union says — a security gap that adds to concerns about an overall lack of enforcement at the border.

Mark Weber, national president of the Customs and Immigration Union, says a shortage of personnel and equipment at official points of entry means less than one per cent of containers moving through Canadian seaports are being searched for illicit goods.

That rate is even smaller for cross-border rail traffic, he said.

“We don’t do it at all,” he told Mercedes Stephenson in an interview that aired Sunday on The West Block. “We don’t know what comes in via train.

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by Sarcasticat••0•Posted inCanada, US-Canada Border

Western Canada home to the country’s most dangerous organized crime groups: report

Western Canada is home to four criminal organizations considered high-level threats to national security, according to Criminal Intelligence Service Canada.

The federal agency released its 2024 Public Report on Organized Crime, which contains data from law enforcement across the country.

The report found that “organized crime remains a preeminent threat to Canada’s security, contributing to thousands of deaths annually from overdoses due to illicit drugs, as well as firearms and gang violence.”

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by Sarcasticat••0•Posted inCanada, Crime

Trump more popular than Trudeau in Canada, survey shows

OTTAWA—As Canadian politicians jockey to position themselves as the best to deal with a mercurial incoming U.S. president Donald Trump, a wary Canadian public is cool to any compromises and supports a tough approach, according to a pair of new polls.

Many Canadians — 40 per cent — are prepared to cut Mexico loose in any trade talks Canada has with the United States, and most — 56 per cent — are not prepared to welcome any influx of migrants fleeing northward to escape Trump’s threatened mass deportation orders, according to an Abacus Data poll over the last week shared with the Star.

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by Blazingcatfur••0•Posted inCanada, USA

Trump Targets Canada With Tariff Threats—and Trolling

Canada and its prime minister, Justin Trudeau, have a Donald Trump problem.

The pair had an at-times rocky relationship during Trump’s first term in the White House, and the president-elect couldn’t resist getting in a dig last week during their impromptu meeting over dinner at Mar-a-Lago, his Florida estate.

Trudeau was complaining about the impact tariffs would have on Canada’s economy, according to people at the dinner, when Trump interjected. If Trudeau didn’t like it, he said, Canada could become America’s 51st state.

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by Blazingcatfur••0•Posted inCanada, President Trump, USA

Canada Seeks Stronger US Ties in Arctic to Counter Russia, China

Canada will establish two new Arctic consulates in Alaska and Greenland and appoint a dedicated Arctic ambassador as part of a long-awaited strategy for a region where Russia and China are increasingly seeking to assert their influence.

The creation of a diplomatic presence in Anchorage, Alaska, in particular, is seen as important to managing Canada’s relations with US President-elect Donald Trump, which have been severely strained in recent weeks over his threat to impose hefty tariffs and pressure to tighten border security.

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by Sarcasticat••0•Posted inArctic, Canada

Department in charge of Old Age Security doesn’t know if payments are enough, auditor finds

“It’s pretty stunning to have the auditor general find that Ottawa bureaucrats in Employment and Social Development Canada (ESDC) don’t really have any clear idea whether or not the federal government’s most expensive program is meeting its objectives,” said Paul Kershaw, a professor at the University of British Columbia’s School of Population and Public Health and founder of Generation Squeeze.

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by Sarcasticat••0•Posted inCanada

Jeff Arbus: The question of why Jews stay is as relevant in modern-day Canada as it was in Nazi Germany … forgets his union bashes white people & smears any opinion right of Stalin

“Why did the Jews stay?”

This question, asked by a high school student during a recent Holocaust education session I gave at a Sault Ste. Marie, Ont., high school, shook me. Today, as violent antisemitism surges in cities like Montreal, Amsterdam and beyond, it is a question many Canadian Jews, including myself, are now asking.

… For many, escaping was logistically and financially impossible — one needed a place to go and the means to get there by train or boat. Some believed the horror was temporary, trusting non-Jewish friends to demand justice. Sound familiar?

This article goes directly to the victimhood fail file. The author is a former union leader who happens also to be Jewish.

He was an OPSEU member. What does OPSEU have to say about Diversity? About Muslims? About White people?

In a world where racism, far-right ideology and white nationalism are on the rise – where Jews, Muslims, immigrants and other equity-seeking groups are threatened with discrimination and increasing violence – we must take a stand against division and fear, and embrace unity and hope.

So Whites who stand up for themselves, who care about the Canada we are in the process of losing are slandered as “White Nationalists” undeserving of a country or protection under his treasured concept of “equity”.

Any opinion that is right of  Stalin is of course smeared as “Far-Right”.

These policies were in place while Arbus served.

He is a tone deaf hypocrite to lecture us about the silence of support and the hatefulness of Canada when he and his union are among the “oppressor class” of institutionalized anti-White racism in Canada.

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by Blazingcatfur••0•Posted in"Anti-White Racism", "Oct 7 2023", Canada