Late last month, a motion to receive approval for a multi-million dollar class action suit against the Quebec government and the Catholic Church was filed in the courts of Quebec.  The plaintiffs are to be an elderly band of survivors of what is called “the Duplessis orphans.”

We generally like to link to news stories for attribution.  However, this story received no mention in press outside of Quebec and only a little there if Google News is to believed.  So you can be excused if you haven’t heard of the Duplessis Orphans or this story.

Unlike the outrage we feel over well-publicized tragedies like the First Nation victims of church-run residential schools or the victims of CIA-mind control experiments in Montreal or the victims of sexual abuse by priests within the Catholic church, the story of the Duplessis orphans hasn’t gained such fire inside or outside of Quebec despite decades of controversy. This is perhaps because it is a true French-Canadian tragedy that was shaped by the politics and religious climate of 1940s & 50s in Quebec where Le Chef was boss and his right-hand was the church with the most loyal following in North America.  Even the CBC in its precis on the fate of the orphans neglects to mention the role of the Catholic church.

So it appears everyone would like to forget it, except the victims can’t.

The Duplessis Orphans came about because they are a class of people that the Quebec government and its society of the day were too embarrassed to acknowledge even existed – the children of single parents who were orphaned.  Orphaned?  Of course, those who remember back to the 1940s, 1950s and 1960s remember that to be “born out of wedlock” was an incalculable sin and a stain on a family.  Better to hide the bastard children somewhere than been seen flouting societal norms especially in Quebec of the day.

Where were they hidden?  So-called sanctuaries run by the church.  Some 20,000 children.  But that is not all.

They weren’t just hidden.  They were falsely diagnosed as mentally ill and treated as mental patients so the Quebec government could rake in health grant money from the federal government and pay the church because these sanctuaries were now deemed psychiatric institutions.

Needless to say, the young children’s vicissitudes and abuse were many and there have been many failed attempts to get acknowledgments of the crimes against humanity by the groups responsible and some kind of decent compensation.   The Canadian Encyclopedia does somewhat of a job on this issue.  We thank the Underground Knowlege YouTube channel for the photo above and recommend their short 4-minute video for a quick history of the controversy surrounding the fate of the Orphans.

Many if not most are now dead.  Just like the woman who suffered at the hands of Montreal mind-control madman Ewen Cameron in the 1960s, it wasn’t until after her death and recently that her daughter received any compensation from the Canadian government. This seems to be the fate of the remaining orphans.

We have uploaded the Orphan’s statement of claim and you read it and download it here.

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One of the darkest chapters of Canadian history surely has to be the CIA-funded mind control experiments done at the Royal Victoria Hospital in Montreal back in the 1950s and 60s.  You don’t have to be a senior citizen to have heard of the infamous “Dr.” Ewen Cameron and his “de-patterning” experiments done at the Allen Memorial Clinic, that gothic structure on the hill above downtown Montreal, attached to the Royal Victoria.

After all, a TV mini-series and three books were written about Cameron and the torture he inflicted upon unsuspecting Montreal women and men who came to him looking for help.  He had developed the novel idea, which the CIA liked for its possible application in brainwashing enemies, that the best way to treat mental patients was to totally destroy their personality and attempt to remake them.   To this end, he gave massive doses of electric shock to individuals to destroy their memories and then placed modified football helmets upon their still breathing corpses that would play endless loops of Cameron’s recorded instructions or other nonsense.  He also had a penchant to put some patients on massive doses of barbiturates or LSD and throw them in a sensory deprivation tank for a month.

Of course, he never told his patients what he was doing – just his colleagues, the CIA and defense officials in Canada although the Canadian government has been pretty dark about their knowledge or involvement.  Patients had to sue both the CIA and the Canadian government to get redress.  The legal defense of Canada and CIA was simply that Cameron was doing these experiments anyway, they were just along for the ride.  The Canadian government eventually had a program to give a paltry $100,000 to Cameron’s victims if they could PROVE they were “depatterned.”   Patients had to take the CIA to court and eventually got a million dollars a number of years ago – pretty meagre.

Why bring this up today?  Well, the daughter of one of the victims finally got the $100,000 payment that Canada had denied her deceased mother for about 50 years.  Is this justice served?

In light of  the fact that the Canadian government and therefore taxpayers are paying tens of millions of dollars to three individuals for Canada’s apparent role in their torture in Syria and millions more to Omar Kadir for that fiasco, we don’t think so,

We want to point out this weird dichotomy that apparently torture on foreign soil is worse than torture done within Canada.

We are concerned about government waste.  But this is not about the money.   How can any amount of money make things right after a mother or daughter or loved one has been brutalized in such a manner?  But the amount signifies responsibility.  Canada, almost 60 years late, gives a token gesture for a deceased victim.  Embarrassing.

For the last number of years, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development in its annual study of education within its 35 member countries has found that Canada has had the largest percentage of college-educated adults in its population. Yay, Canucks!

While this year Canada, unfortunately, slipped behind South Korea into second place, this is a profound achievement and reflects Canada’s proud heritage of spending more public funds than any other OECD country on college education for its population.

So it is bitterly ironic that a scandal regarding phony degrees held by Canadians has recently erupted.

800 Canadians have phony degrees

Apparently, as many as 800 Canadians have been duping their fellow countrymen by having purchased fake degrees from overseas diploma mills.

According to CBC Marketplace which broke the story a few weeks ago:

“Fake diplomas are a billion-dollar industry, according to experts, and Marketplace obtained business records of its biggest player, a Pakistan-based IT firm called Axact. The [Marketplace] team spent months combing through thousands of degree transactions, cross-referencing personal information with customers’ social media profiles.

“The investigation revealed more than 800 Canadians could have purchased a fake degree.”

Worse for people who interact with these fraudsters, many of the degrees appear to be for professionals “like engineers and health care workers who lack the proper skills and expertise [and] can put the public at risk.”

Phony lawyer victimized clients 

One victim was a Toronto lawyer who hired someone with a phony law degree to manage new business for him. The fraudster had presented impressive college documentation to get the job. But once at work took advantage of new clients, trying to squeeze as much money out of them as he possibly could. The experience ended up costing the real lawyer some $100,000 although the fraudster was only employed for a month.

It just shows that Canada is not immune to crime and fraud. Polite Canadians can be taken advantage of by those without scruples even though we appear to live in a cultural paradise of tolerance and love.

This is why we published our white paper on fraud in healthcare. We can get burned!

Pretty close to the truth.

The Fraser Institute, that conservative think tank in BC, has come out with another horrific report about Canadian tax levels. They estimate that an average family with $83,000 in income last year paid around $35,000 in overall taxes while only paying $31,000 for housing, food and clothing. Yikes!

Worse, taxes have grown more rapidly than any other single expenditure, some 2006% since 1961.

Saving graces

The only saving graces for Canadians is that their income has risen more over that same period of time and that the cost of healthcare is included in that total.

Here is a chart from the Frasier Institute report that shows the breakdown of the various taxes a Canadian family of four would pay. Healthcare is a minor part yet it is the major expenditure for most provincial governments.

Americans paying through the nose for healthcare

The poor Americans have it bad on healthcare. Forbes Magazine reports that for a family of four in the United States the cost of healthcare alone was a whopping $25,826 in 2016. And that is in real dollars.

Let us know your stories

Our vocal concern relating to unreported fraud and abuses within the Canadian social and healthcare systems is bearing some fruit. Individuals within and without the system are coming forward to tell us stories which are curling our hair. We will be reporting these down the line.

I want to encourage people who have stories and details of abuses to contact us with them.  Anonymity guaranteed if desired.

Email me at bob@monitortelegram.com.

Recently, a court in Ontario upheld a ruling by Ontario’s Information and Privacy Commissioner that the names of Ontario’s highest paid doctors, amounts they receive from the Ontario Health Insurance Plan and their medical specialties should be disclosed to the public because it is public information, not private as several doctors’ groups had argued.  The Toronto Star has been championing this fight since 2013 because the only information Ontario’s health ministry would release to the paper’s FOI request at that time was that the top 100 billing doctors in the province pulled down $191 million from 2012 to 2013 and that “the highest biller alone claimed more than $6 million, while the second- and third-highest billers each claimed more than $4 million. Nineteen doctors received payments of more than $2 million each.”

Good doctors can do a lot of good work

Let’s be clear – just because a doctor bills a lot of money does not mean necessarily there is something sinister going on.  Some doctors are amazing producers and can help many patients.  They deserve their rewards and our thanks because they actually save money.

Taxpayers deserve accountability

That being said, in our taxpayer funded system, this does not mean they fall outside the scrutiny of the public for the monies they receive.  We have a right to know if the money is well-spent or not.  But apparently, the medical profession does not see it that way.  They have already appealed this ruling.

Health care bureaucrats invisible

It is incredibly disturbing that a private organization like the Star needs to be the one to champion this issue.  Where are the civil servants we pay to be stewards of our government health care funds?  It is appalling that the Information and Privacy Commissioner apparently stands alone to make this information public.

Earlier this year, we released a white paper on healthcare fraud in Canada.  The “lily-white, I’m all right, Jack” of Canadian provincial health care agencies on this subject is a dubious pose, considering the substantial fraud uncovered daily just across the border.  Ah, but there, American government agencies are the ones shining the light of truth on private health institutions.  Here, the government would only be shining the light on itself, something no Canadian government agency, federal or provincial, in its right mind would do.

Canadians have bought a Trump-style contradiction

It is our position that Canadians have been lulled into a false sense of security on how their health care money is being spent.  They, unfortunately, have bought the comforting and delusional platitudes of “everything is okay, this is Canada” in a similar vein to those Americans who believe Donald Trump will be their saviour despite his obvious willingness to dismantle their own health care system and put tens of millions of people out of health insurance coverage.  One thing said, another thing done.

Federal level law enforcement authority needed

That is why we have called for a federal authority, perhaps under the RCMP, to investigate and prosecute healthcare fraud in this country despite the fact that health care is a provincial issue.  Is it perfect?

No, but it would be a hell of a lot better than what we have.

This is an excellent question.  In fact, it is one we find intensely interesting because it is not quite understandable how there can be such a driven concern about this in the United States and so little here in Canada.  So we decided to take a look ourselves at the available literature and found a very concerning attitude here that “fraud” has been wiped from our healthcare vernacular.  Instead, euphemisms are used like “over-billing” and “over-utilization.”

So we decided to take a look ourselves at the available literature to see what is going on.

“Fraud” has disappeared from the healthcare vernacular

We found that the word “fraud” has been wiped from our healthcare vernacular. Instead, euphemisms are used like “over-billing” and “over-utilization” to draw attention away from potential criminal activity. Just look at a recent story we excerpted for our website from the Toronto Star on doctor billings in Ontario.

Troubling!

No federal coordination 

We also found there is no coordinated oversight in Canada relating to healthcare fraud.

White paper on healthcare fraud in Canada NOW available

So to detail our findings, we have written a white paper on the subject. If you are already a subscriber of the Monitor Telegram, you have been sent a link to a download page so you can get a copy.

If you haven’t subscribed yet, you get a free copy when you do so.  Just look for the subscription form in our  sidebar

Online survey on healthcare fraud

At the end of the paper, we have a link to an anonymous, online survey on your experience with healthcare fraud.

We look forward to publishing the results.

Toronto Silly Hall

If you live in Toronto, you must have heard recently that more than half of city workers can get six months of paid sick leave each year.

If you live in Toronto, you must have heard recently that more than half of city workers can get six months of paid sick leave each year.

Say what? Let me repeat that. More than half of the city’s unionized workers are entitled to have 130 days (there are roughly 240 working days in a year) of sick leave each year! For guys that have been with the city for more than 10 years, they get 100% of their pay for those sick days while those with less, get 75% to 100% based on a sliding scale.

Do city workers really need that? Apparently, so. They are so sick and unwell in our land of free health care, that as revealed by the Toronto Sun, city employee absenteeism cost taxpayers $104 million last year, up $3 million more from 2014.

The Sun also reported that there are 1,285 city employees (1 in 20 of all city employees) on the long-term disability (LTD) benefit that comes into effect after those 130 days.

Crikey. What a sweet deal!

There is no need to wonder why the City of Toronto is in financial trouble with financial management like this. They just signed the deals earlier this year.

It makes my stomach turn. Oh, geez, I am feeling sick now myself.

I need a sick day! But I am self-employed and have to go to work otherwise, I can’t feed my family or pay those lovely taxes that support all those workers.

It makes me wonder, though, if I can con – no, poor choice of words – negotiate with the City into paying me somehow – a self-employed health tax benefit, perhaps?

Any entrepreneurs out there willing to support me on this?