Mark Steyn finds that the triumph of American genetic Imperialism is just one more humiliating consequence of Canada’s nationalized health system.

My jaw doesn’t often drop, but this story had it heading for the basement:

Thousands of Canadians who are infertile in Canada have to place all their hopes on just 33 men who are Canadian sperm donors.

What? A nation of 30 million people has just 33 sperm donors? Apparently so. Now why would that be?

At one time Canada had two dozen sperm banks but when the Assisted Human Reproduction Act made it illegal to pay for sperm or egg donors they dried up in 2004.
Today there are very few men willing to give up their sperm for nothing.

...

“Today, there is one South Asian donor for all of Canada,” he says, noting that couples are often shocked at the limited choices.

One donor for thousands of wannabe parents? He must be working round the clock. Well, not quite. For Canadian womenfolk have now been reduced to the ultimate indignity:

Doctors and patients have had little choice but to use sperm and eggs from south of the border.

One of the biggest suppliers of donor sperm is Outreach Health Services which imports and distributes semen for assisted reproduction clinics across Canada. The company imports sperm from an agency that collects primarily from men in Georgia and northern Florida, where donors are paid about $100 per visit.

With so much sperm coming from the States, some estimate that up to 80 per cent of babies conceived in Canada through donor sperm have American DNA.

Wow. This isn’t your father’s War of 1812. The poor Canucks never saw it coming. Millions of Yank sperm leaping like salmon up the Ontario side of Niagara Falls.

A wait for semen seems pretty much the logical reductio of “free at the point of demand” health care. But, as Kathy Shaidle says, how can this go wrong? Canada, circa 2050: Eighty percent drawling rednecks demanding grits with their maple-creme donuts, and the remainder a vast tribe of intermarried step-siblings riddled with genetic disorders descended from “one South Asian donor.”

The Shiawasee County, Michigan Argus-Press reports that being the victim of international disapprobation has brought a Michigan welfare mom 15 minutes of fame.

An Owosso (Michigan) woman says she was recently denied permission to cross the Canadian border because she is on welfare.

Rose Kelley, 25, said she was trying to visit friends and family who live in Canada, but ran into many complications on the way.

She arrived at the Sarnia, Ontario, border May 1 with her children Xander, 5, and Onyx, 1. When she reached the customs and immigration office she was given a list of items she needed to cross the border – some of which included: evidence of citizenship, financial support, financial assistance, confirmed means of departure, and more. ...

Because of this, she had to travel back to Owosso to get the necessary papers and then return May 3.

“I brought everything. My entire folder had every piece of paperwork that they could ask for,” Kelley said

However, she was once again denied entry.

“They said I don’t make enough money and people on welfare shouldn’t take a vacation,” said Kelley, a single mother who has been on assistance for five years. “I was told that I wouldn’t be allowed to cross the border until my life ‘drastically changed.’”

She said she was stunned by the events. ...

Because of the incident, Kelley said she filed a discrimination complaint with the agency Tuesday, but has heard no response yet.

Dozens of outraged liberal Canadian readers expressed indignation, reported the Toronto Sun, which also quoted Ms. Kelley observing indignantly:

It has been a terrible ordeal,” Kelley, 25, of Owosso, Mich., said of last Sunday’s trip to the Sarnia border crossing where she was turned back. “I have family and friends over there and I want to visit them.” ...

“This trip has been a big ordeal for me and my children,” Kelley said yesterday. “I have never done anything wrong and have a squeaky clean criminal record.”

Amusingly, both American and Canadian press accounts strike poses of open-mouthed astonishment at the man-bites-dog bizarreness of those Canadian Border Service Agents actually looking upon being on welfare as a discreditable status.

Nadeem Esmail, in the Wall Street Journal, suggests Americans thinking about socialized health care ought to look at the Canadian health system to see what it’s going to be like.

Health-care resources are not unlimited in any country, even rich ones like Canada and the U.S., and must be rationed either by price or time. When individuals bear no direct responsibility for paying for their care, as in Canada, that care is rationed by waiting.

Canadians often wait months or even years for necessary care. For some, the status quo has become so dire that they have turned to the courts for recourse. Several cases currently before provincial courts provide studies in what Americans could expect from government-run health insurance.

In Ontario, Lindsay McCreith was suffering from headaches and seizures yet faced a four and a half month wait for an MRI scan in January of 2006. Deciding that the wait was untenable, Mr. McCreith did what a lot of Canadians do: He went south, and paid for an MRI scan across the border in Buffalo. The MRI revealed a malignant brain tumor.

Ontario’s government system still refused to provide timely treatment, offering instead a months-long wait for surgery. In the end, Mr. McCreith returned to Buffalo and paid for surgery that may have saved his life. He’s challenging Ontario’s government-run monopoly health-insurance system, claiming it violates the right to life and security of the person guaranteed by the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

Shona Holmes, another Ontario court challenger, endured a similarly harrowing struggle. In March of 2005, Ms. Holmes began losing her vision and experienced headaches, anxiety attacks, extreme fatigue and weight gain. Despite an MRI scan showing a brain tumor, Ms. Holmes was told she would have to wait months to see a specialist. In June, her vision deteriorating rapidly, Ms. Holmes went to the Mayo Clinic in Arizona, where she found that immediate surgery was required to prevent permanent vision loss and potentially death. Again, the government system in Ontario required more appointments and more tests along with more wait times. Ms. Holmes returned to the Mayo Clinic and paid for her surgery.

On the other side of the country in Alberta, Bill Murray waited in pain for more than a year to see a specialist for his arthritic hip. The specialist recommended a “Birmingham” hip resurfacing surgery (a state-of-the-art procedure that gives better results than basic hip replacement) as the best medical option. But government bureaucrats determined that Mr. Murray, who was 57, was “too old” to enjoy the benefits of this procedure and said no. In the end, he was also denied the opportunity to pay for the procedure himself in Alberta. He’s heading to court claiming a violation of Charter rights as well.

These constitutional challenges, along with one launched in British Columbia last month, share a common goal: to win Canadians the freedom to spend their own money to protect themselves from the inadequacies of the government health-insurance system.

550 metric tons of yellowcake uranium, capable of being enriched for use in nuclear power plants or bombs, arrived in Montreal on Saturday following a secret airlift and sea voyage. The uranium came from Saddam Hussein’s nuclear program, and was sold to Canada’s Cameco Corporation by the government of Iraq in a deal worth tens of millions of dollars. US and Iraqi security forces took considerable care to prevent the material falling into the hands of jihadist forces or insurgent factions.

Newsday.com

Canadian Press

CBC’s Rex Murphy identifies Canada’s two billion dollar Gun Registry as a classic example of “feel good legislation” representing a pretense at solving a problem, but completely ineffective. From watching this one, I get the impression that Canada has a lot better news commentary than we do.

Hat tip to the News Junkie.

Ezra Levant, publisher of Calgary’s Western Standard, two years ago reprinted the Danish Mohammed cartoons.

Yesterday, as the National Post reports, he was hailed before the Alberta Human Rights and Citizenship Commission to answer a complaint filed by the head of the Islamic Supreme Council of Canada.

Levant has produced several video statements defending Candanian free speech, which are linked by LGF.

Roger Kimball describes how Western courts are being successfully used to suppress criticism of Islamic extremism.

Last summer, Cambridge University Press announced that it would pulp all unsold copies of its 2006 book Alms for Jihad: Charity and Terrorism in the Islamic World by Robert O. Collins, a professor emeritus of history at the University of California, and J. Millard Burr, a retired employee of the State Department. Why? Because Khalid bin Mahfouz, a Saudi banker, filed a libel claim to quash the book. According to a story in The Chronicle for Higher Education [reg req’d], Cambridge instantly capitulated, paid “substantial damages” to Mr. Mahfouz, and even went so far as to contact university libraries worldwide to ask them to remove the book from their shelves. They seem to have been successful in their request: I have searched high and low for the book in academic libraries and public libraries and have found that, although it is listed as “not checked out,” it is nowhere to be found.

Suppressing books he doesn’t like seems to be a hobby of Mr. Mahfouz’s. His web site lists successful actions against three other books Reaping the Whirlwind: The Taliban Movement in Afghanistan, Forbidden Truth: U.S.-Taliban Secret Oil Diplomacy and the Failed Hunt for Bin Laden and Funding Evil: How Terrorism Is Financed—and How to Stop It. As Robert Spencer explained in The Washington Times, one notable feature of Mr. Mahfouz’s legal actions is that he has sued various American authors in Britain, where libel laws favor the plaintiff.

In an earlier posting, we noted that a Montreal policeman had gotten into big trouble for writing a humorous song urging Third World immigrants to make some effort to assimilate or go home.

At that time we were only able to find a video of the song. We could not find the text anywhere on the Net, and our own modest abilities were insufficient to enable us to produce an accurate transcription.

One of our readers was kind enough to send us a link to a site which did publish the text.

On pense que ça commence à faire lÃ
On pense qu’on a assez ri de nous autres lÃ
Pis pour ceux qui n’seraient pas contents
Crissez-moi votre camp

On veut bien accepter les ethnies
Mais non pas à n’importe quel prix
Si tu veux te joindre à notre beau pays
Tu devras faire certains compromis

Lorsque accueilli dans une place
Il faut se fondre à la masse
Parce qu’on peut dire qu’ici tu es bien
Plus que d’où tu d’viens!

On peut maintenant porter le kirpan
Parce que nous autres on est tolérant
Changer les règles du YMCA
Pis un coup parti du CLSC

Nous sommes-nous fracturé la raison?
Pour les caprices de chaque religion
Vos accommodements raisonnables
On est pu capable!

Y’est maintenant temps qu’on soit entendu
Quand notre culture se fait cracher dessus
Si tu n’es pas content de ton sort
Y’existe un endroit qu’est l’aéroport

Toi ma minorité ethnique
Arrête un peu ta musique
Sinon dans ce cas-là tu devras
Retourner chez toi
Retourner chez toi

(roughly translated by JDZ)

We think that enough is enough;
We’ve had enough of being ridiculed by strangers.
Too bad for the malcontents;
Do us a favor, and decamp.

We are happy to accept ethnic immigrants,
But not at absolutely any price.
If you want to be part of our beautiful country
You ought to compromise a bit.

When you are welcomed to a place,
You ought to try to fit in.
Because, after all, you’re better off here
Than you were where you came from.

You can now carry your kirpan
Because we’re tolerant of others,
Change the rules of the YMCA,
Stage a coup against the CLSC.

Have we lost our reason?
Over the whims of each Religion,
Of your reasonable accomodations
We are now less capable.

Now is the time for us to be heard,
When our culture has been spat upon,
If you are not content with your lot,
You can try the option of the airport.

All you ethnic minorities
Should stop playing your own tune for a bit,
And, if you won’t, you will have to
Go back where you came from.
Go back where you came from.

Special thanks to Nelle Chan and Dominique R. Poirier, and thanks to Dominique R. Poirier again for some corrections.

The town council of Herouxville, Quebec in response to Islamic immigration passed for public information a declaration of local social norms, which among other things declares:

French version

English translation

nous considérons comme hors norme.., tels le fait de tuer les femmes par lapidation sur la place publique ou en les faisant brûler vives, les brûler avec de l’acide, les exciser etc.

Their English translation was slightly bowdlerized (doubtless to spare the tender sensibilities of liberal Anglophone Canadians) thusly:

we consider that killing women in public beatings, or burning them alive are not part of our standards of life.

But what it really says is:

we regard as contrary to conventional behavior, such activities as killing women by public stonings or by burning them alive, or burning them with acid, circumsizing them, and so on.

The BBC reports that Canadian Muslims are insulted. Of course they are. How do you suppose residents of Quebec can possibly imagine that anyone would do such atrocious things?

On November 11, 1999 Terry Kelly was in a Shoppers Drug Mart store in Dartmouth, Nova Scotia. At 10:55 AM an announcement came over the store’s PA asking customers who would still be on the premises at 11:00 AM to give two minutes of silence in respect to the veterans who have sacrificed so much for us. When eleven o’clock arrived on that day, an announcement was again made asking for the “two minutes of silence” to commence. All customers, with the exception of a man who was accompanied by his young child, showed their respect.

His indignation at the man’s lack of respect led Terry Kelly to compose and record this song.

video

The newly elected Conservative government of Canada will be moving to abolish the Canadian registry of shotguns and rifles as quickly as possible. The new Public Security Minister Stockwell Day said the public would be shocked when the actual costs of Canada’s gun registry program are finally revealed.  Day said the public would have to wait for the Auditor genearal to release the figures, but said: “People are going to be upset and they’re going to have a right to be upset.”

When the Liberals added the registry to the federal gun control program in 1995, they said it would cost taxpayers no more than $2-million. But the most recent estimates put the figure in the hundreds of millions of dollars, bringing the total cost of the gun program to more than $1-billion.

The Conservatives have called the registry a waste of taxpayers money that targets duck hunters rather than criminals…

The gun program consumes about $90-million a year in direct costs while a single campaign promise to hire an additional 1,000 Mounties would add $50-million to the federal payroll.

Let’s hope that Australia, Britain, and the United States learn from the results of the Canadian experiment.

Steve Janke of Angry in the Great White North reports from the Canadian election campaign front:

Liberal candidate to veteran: Get out of Canada!

At the Pembroke Outdoor Sportsman’s Club, Liberal candidate Don Lindsay revealed a portion of the Liberal platform related to compensation for gun owners should their legally owned weapons be confiscated. Essentially, if you think you are owed something, think again.

To be even more precise, if you think the Liberals owe you something, you should hit the road:

Don Lindsay’s self destruction continued when club member and Canadian Veteran George Tompkins stood to ask the candidates his question. “If the handgun ban goes forward. What plan would your party offer to compensate those of us who legally own the guns that would be confiscated?” To which Lindsay replied “Sir America is our neighbor not our nation, if you elect a society that talks about that kind of perspective I suggest that perhaps you go there!”

Maybe Lindsay thought grabbing [Conservative] Paul Martin’s line from the leader’s debate would work for him.

Of course, Linday’s comments don’t even make much sense. If the majority of voters do elect a government with that sort of policy, then wouldn’t it make sense that Lindsay be the one looking for somewhere else to live? I don’t think he needs to. He is welcome to stay, of course.

I don’t think people should leave for holding different opinions, and voting based on those opinions.

Too bad he couldn’t extend that courtesy to a man who fought for this country.

It’s moments like these that a Conservative candidate lives for.

Hat tip to PJM.

Thomas Bray points out that America-style civil liberties are unheard of even in some prominent democracies:

Spying on e-mail and cell phone traffic without a warrant. Searching offices and residences without a court order. Locking citizens away for weeks or months without filing charges.

Sound like your worst nightmare about the supposedly lawless Bush administration? Perhaps. But I refer to restrictions on civil liberties that are taking place not in the United States but, in the order in which I cited them, Canada, France and Great Britain.

All three countries are cited as moral superiors to the rogue regime in Washington, where the fascist leaders George Bush and Dick Cheney are said to be intent on fastening a reign of terror on the United States. But a brief scan of newspaper websites in those countries — something that the American mainstream media could easily have done before unleashing its own reign of terror on unsuspecting readers—reveals that their governments have in many cases gone far beyond where the Bush-Cheney could ever dream of going.

If there was ever the slightest doubt in anybody’s mind that gun registration leads to gun confiscation, well, here you are. It’s happening in Canada, and it can happen here. To prevent it, JOIN THE NRA.

William Shatner secrets:

“I’m a Canadian. If the US and Canada were ever to war against each other it would be my duty to kill as many Americans as I possibly could. I’d enjoy it.”