VANCOUVER, British Columbia (LifeSiteNews) — “You get what you tolerate.” 

In his documentary about Canada, released August 29, UK Telegraph journalist Steven Edginton details the rapid decline of the nation and explores how its pursuit of progressive policies has led it into chaos which could engulf the entire West. 

Canada’s Woke Nightmare—A Warning to the West details the soaring levels of crime, homelessness, and drug addiction in the country. It also notes its appalling embrace of abortion and assisted suicide. It argues that “tolerance” for these evils is driven by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s desire to transform Canadian society. Alongside repressive COVID measures and draconian laws limiting free speech, Edginton records how, under the Liberal prime minister, “Canada has sought to position itself as the global bastion of progressive politics.” 

Showing the shocking levels of neglect and moral and social decay to be found in Canada, Edginton’s film not only presents the symptoms of what he calls “wokeism,” it diagnoses a cause. 

“I don’t believe that any of the conundrum that we’re in at the moment in the west is strictly political,” says Canadian psychologist Jordan Peterson in one of the several segments in which he appears.  

“I think what’s happened is that the predatory psychopaths have figured out how to cloak themselves in the guise of compassion.” 

The documentary supplies ample evidence to support this view. 

‘Canada is dying’ 

Edginton begins his investigation in the west coast city of Vancouver, where possession of hard drugs, including heroin, cocaine, and fentanyl, has been legalized. As one passerby remarks, “Overdoses are up. Violent crime is up. It’s a jungle.” 

The Telegraph journalist then speaks to filmmaker Aaron Gunn, whose own work has focused on the escalation of open drug use, homelessness, and crime in Canada. Gunn’s recent documentary Canada Is Dying has over 1 million views on YouTube alone. 

Gunn says he documents the “general societal chaos and explosion of drug use in every major Canadian city.”  

“Overdose deaths are up 1000% in the last 10 years,” he said. He added, “Every day in Vancouver four people are randomly attacked.” 

Gunn and Edginton are aggressively challenged on Vancouver’s notorious Hastings Street by apparent drug users, leading them to halt filming and continue elsewhere. 

Having witnessed the drug epidemic and its antisocial fallout firsthand, Edginton asks Gunn who is to blame for the chaos in Vancouver. 

Quoting a local business owner, the filmmaker replied, “You get what you tolerate”  

This is one part of the film’s message to the wider West of the toxic legacy of woke “tolerance”.  

Compassionate Killing 

Canada is dying not just from drug overdoses but from a legally sanctioned medical industry of death. 

Canada has permitted euthanasia since 2016. In recent years, it has been accused of  encouraging people to seek medically assisted suicide.

RELATED: Canadian veteran, ex-Paralympian offered assisted suicide by VA office after seeking help

Edginton interviewed a military veteran, disabled during her army service, whose “abandonment” by the state has led her to consider taking her own life. When Christine Gauthier approached the authorities for help in constructing a mobility ramp to access her home, she spoke of her despair at her immobility. Having waited five years for state services to replace her wheelchair, she felt her situation was hopeless. Tearfully, she related how she was offered the option of “assisted suicide” as an alternative.  

Gauthier claims that veterans like her are being left to “crawl into their own hole and die.” 

“Do you think that they want you dead?” asked Edginton. 

“Yes, and I think it’s wrong,” she replied.  

As Edginton reported, pro-life advocacy group Euthanasia Prevention Coalition estimates that 13,500 people chose state-assisted suicide, euphemized as “Medical Assistance in Dying” or MAiD, last year.

Demand is rising in a nation losing hope. 

Suicide and abortion as social ‘progress’

Edginton also speaks to physician and “social justice activist” Dr. Konia Trouton, a founding member of the Canadian Association of Medical Assistance in Dying (MAID) Providers (CAMAP). Trouton provides guidance and training to doctors and nurses involved in the provision of assisted suicide. A veteran abortionist, she sees herself as an agent of social justice.  

“Most of my care has been with abortion care, reproductive rights, social justice,” she says. 

“I have just tried to integrate what I believe in with what’s happening on the ground” 

Trouton notes with enthusiasm that both “assisted dying” and Mifepristone – the over-the-counter abortion pill — were both made legal in 2016. As a result of the abortion pill, she ceased to perform surgical abortions in 2019 at Vancouver’s only dedicated abortion center, a clinic she had opened with her same-sex partner Dawn Fowler. 

Trouton continued to perform surgical abortions at Victoria General Hospital, while seeing a new opportunity in the introduction of state-assisted suicide, which she described as an “interesting change which is also about social justice and a person’s autonomy.” 

Last November Trouton published her view that the demand for assisted suicide is very likely to outstrip the supply of doctors currently providing it in Canada.  

Edginton asks the abortionist whether she thinks Canada is a “post-Christian” nation. 

“I don’t think Canada was ever fully a Christian nation because it has such a strong indigenous culture,” she replied.

Like  her interviewer, Touton is apparently unaware that until very recently a majority of Canada’s First Nations people were Christians and that almost half of Canada’s First Nations people are still Christians today. 

RELATED: Canadian doctors encouraged to offer assisted suicide as alternative form of ‘healthcare’

The crisis of “conservatism” 

Edginton concludes his documentary with a warning about the failure of so-called “conservative” political parties to halt the madness engulfing the West. 

He speaks to Maxime Bernier, the former Conservative MP who now heads the People’s Party of Canada, which he founded in 2018. 

Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre, whose party now enjoys a commanding lead in the polls over Trudeau’s Liberals, is described as a man who  “knows he has to speak like a conservative to be elected as conservative leader .. but is going to the left to be elected as prime minister”. 

This is the reason, Bernier says, for Poilievre’s acquiescence in the face of mounting social chaos and “why he’s OK with the mounting gender ideology.”

Snakes 

Edginton concludes his reportage with a return to Jordan Peterson. The clinical psychologist, who first made headlines by declaring his refusal to use transgender pronouns, was recently ordered by a Canadian court to undergo “social media training” to retain his license to practise.

“All this nonsense about compassion is the manipulation of snakes – pulling in the useful idiots who are perhaps genuinely compassionate – and that’s Canada,” Peterson declared. 

Edginton’s documentary is replete with evidence – social, political, and medical – to support such a sobering claim.