A new documentary called “Broken Country” is laying out a case that Canada’s much-praised social model has broken down, and that Americans should pay attention before the same policies take root at home.
Director Mira Metter and coproducer Mike Werry traveled across Canada and interviewed more than 4,500 Canadians, along with over 70 policy experts, examining healthcare, affordability, drug policy, immigration, crime and government spending over the past two decades.
One case featured in the film involves a man who slipped on ice, suffered a spinal injury, and waited 15 hours in an emergency room before being admitted. During the wait, he was given multiple bags of morphine to manage the pain. By the time a surgeon saw him, he had lost feeling below the waist. The damage was permanent.
“He was rushed to emerge in an ambulance and ended up waiting over 15 hours just to get admitted,” Metter said. “By the time he had gotten to see his surgeon, he was unable to feel anything below the waist, and he ended up having spinal cord damage that was permanent.”
Materials provided by the filmmakers state his doctor later told him that surgery within an hour could have led to a full recovery. Three years on, he lives with chronic pain, can only walk a short distance with a walker, and was offered Medical Assistance in Dying while seeking treatment for that pain and disability.
Metter said it took more than 10 months after his injury for him to get an appointment at a pain clinic.
“When he finally arrived, they asked him, ‘What is your pain level?’ And he said, ‘It’s a 10 out of 10.’ And they offered him MAID, which is medical assisted suicide,” Metter said. “He said, ‘I’m not a lost cause. Like I’m just in a lot of pain. Like why are you offering me MAID as a solution to my pain? I just don’t want to be in pain.'”
Canada legalized euthanasia under MAID in 2016. According to the BBC, the practice now accounts for one in every 20 deaths in the country. Separately, a November report from the Canadian advocacy group SecondStreet.org found that 23,000 Canadian patients died on medical waitlists over the past year.
Immigration numbers overwhelm cities
Metter also pointed to immigration policy as a major driver of strain on the country’s infrastructure.
“I think one of the biggest issues that we’ve had with immigration on this side of the border is that we opened the parameters on immigration for temporary migrants, so student visas, temporary workers, and the numbers that came in, we didn’t have any of the resources to accommodate it,” Metter said.
She said Canada took in roughly 2.3 million people over two years, in a country of about 40 million people.
“Toronto is the biggest city in it, but that’s still an exponential number of people to come into a city that’s just not designed for that, and wasn’t braced for that kind of intake,” Metter said. “The situation has just become really gridlocked in every single sort of resource and everything, even the streets, you try to drive in Toronto, and you’re going to have a really hard time going a mile or two.”
The film also examines drug policy, including Canada’s approach of establishing safe injection and safe supply sites.
“The drug epidemic in Canada is similar to the drug epidemic that is being faced in various pockets around the U.S.,” Metter said. “We have, however, taken on the stance of safe injection, safe supply sites, where we allow sort of a location for people to get materials to use for consuming drugs where they’re supervised.”
Hardship that crosses party lines
Metter said the most striking finding from the project was how consistent people’s struggles were, regardless of political affiliation.
“No matter what their political stance is, and we never asked that, people are experiencing the same hardships, the issues that everyone is facing, they’re facing together,” Metter said. “When we removed this lens of, you know, slogans or echo chambers or positioning, and just ask genuine questions like, ‘Can you afford a home?,’ and ‘Are you living paycheck to paycheck?,’ and ‘Are you able to access healthcare when you need it?,’ ‘Have you ever had to wait a long time to receive healthcare?,’ ‘Do you have a primary care doctor?,’ across the board, people were struggling with these same things.”
“I think that is something that gets really swept under the rug, is that people are really struggling, really genuinely struggling just to get by,” Metter said.
“Broken Country” opens in limited theatrical release in Canada and the U.S. on Sept. 18, with a wider release on Amazon Prime set for Oct. 26. Fox News Digital reached out to the office of Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney for comment.
