So much for Canada's "more compassionate" approach to people with mental health problems

[blackbird]

Canada closed mental institutions years ago and released most of the mental health patients into society in the naive belief that communities would take care of them.

It never happened.

And in the case of the Vancouver car ramming of the Filipinon celebration on Saturday, eleven people were killed and at least twenty people seriously injured.

It could have been avoided because this offender had numerous interactions with police and mental health authorities yet was not involuntarily committed.

"If the suspect, Kai-ji Adam Lo, 30, is found not criminally responsible and sentenced to psychiatric care, instead of prison, he will be institutionalized, like he should have been in the first place. In this case, the outcome of our more “compassionate” approach to mental health is disturbing."

Car ramming suspect should have never been free in the first place | National Post

[TreeBeard]

45 minutes ago, blackbird said:

involuntarily committed.

It’s really easy to use hindsight after a tragedy to think you can judge someone’s mental health status and whether they would cause others harm, but life is never as simple as you might want.  So your answer seems to be “lock them all up”. 
 

That’s never going to happen. 

[blackbird]

54 minutes ago, TreeBeard said:

It’s really easy to use hindsight after a tragedy to think you can judge someone’s mental health status and whether they would cause others harm, but life is never as simple as you might want.  So your answer seems to be “lock them all up”. 
 

That’s never going to happen. 

You are lying again.  I never said lock them all up.   

There are many who have been repeatedly arrested and released that should not have been on the loose.  You know that.  Why don't you admit it?   Like the guy that just killed eleven people and injured at least 20 more.

[TreeBeard]

45 minutes ago, blackbird said:

There are many who have been repeatedly arrested and released that should not have been on the loose.  You know that.  Why don't you admit it?   Like the guy

When was he arrested?  

[blackbird]

39 minutes ago, TreeBeard said:

When was he arrested?  

The news reports say he was.  They didn't give the dates.

[TreeBeard]

3 minutes ago, blackbird said:

The news reports say he was.  They didn't give the dates.

The news report never says he was arrested.  Did you actually read the article?  Are you lying about what the article says when I can just go look?  

Your news article does say this:

The provincial online court database indicates that Lo had no prior criminal record. 

 

Edited April 29 by TreeBeard

[blackbird]

1 minute ago, TreeBeard said:

The news report never says he was arrested. 

Your news article does say this:

The provincial online court database indicates that Lo had no prior criminal record. 

 

I never said he had a criminal record.   I said he had numerous interactions with police and mental health authorities.

[TreeBeard]

Just now, blackbird said:

I never said he had a criminal record.   I said he had numerous interactions with police and mental health authorities.

You said he was arrested. 

[blackbird]

4 minutes ago, TreeBeard said:

You said he was arrested. 

Perhaps I heard that on the news.   An arrest could mean an interaction with police.  You said no charges were laid.

So, he had numerous interactions with police and mental health.  Why wasn't he put in a mental health hospital?

Do you even concern yourself about the 11 people that were killed and around 20 injured?

You sound more interested in defending the guy who killed them.  Maybe you need help.

Edited April 29 by blackbird

[blackbird]

19 minutes ago, TreeBeard said:

The news report never says he was arrested.  Did you actually read the article?  Are you lying about what the article says when I can just go look?

I assumed he was arrested but I could be wrong.   He could have been picked up by police and taken into there office.  I am just going by what I heard on the news and don't remember the exact details.  However that is not important.  The thing is he had numerous interactions with police and mental health.  He should have been put in a mental health facility.  It's that simple.   

2 minutes ago, blackbird said:

Did you actually read the article?

No I don't receive the newspaper.  I heard the reports on television news.

The fact that he had numerous interactions with police and mental health should tell you something is not right.  The guy should not have been left free with mental problems

Edited April 29 by blackbird

[herbie]

Is it necessary to start 20 threads about the same f*cking subject or is someone paying you to post?

[blackbird]

Just now, herbie said:

Is it necessary to start 20 threads about the same f*cking subject or is someone paying you to post?

You're lying.  There is no 20 threads about the same subject.  Go wash your mouth out with soap.

[blackbird]

2 minutes ago, herbie said:

20 threads

There is only one OP thread with the main subject being about Canada's faulty compassionate approach to mental health.

We know you don't like it being pointed out as the failure it is.

 

[SpankyMcFarland]

There are two powerful constituencies that agree on the status quo: firstly, the patient rights movement that prizes individual liberty over safety and is by no means confined to Canada; secondly, us. We the people have made it clear to the politicians and bean counters that we want to spend scarce health care dollars elsewhere. 

[CdnFox]

11 minutes ago, SpankyMcFarland said:

There are two powerful constituencies that agree on the status quo: firstly, the patient rights movement that prizes individual liberty over safety and is by no means confined to Canada; secondly, us. We the people have made it clear to the politicians and bean counters that we want to spend scarce health care dollars elsewhere. 

Then locking them up becomes the only option. You can't let these people wander around and kill folks.

[TreeBeard]

50 minutes ago, SpankyMcFarland said:

There are two powerful constituencies that agree on the status quo: firstly, the patient rights movement that prizes individual liberty over safety and is by no means confined to Canada; secondly, us. We the people have made it clear to the politicians and bean counters that we want to spend scarce health care dollars elsewhere. 

I think we need WAY more community mental health care workers.  That’s exactly where the dollars need to go.  Raise taxes to do it. 
 

Locking people up isn’t a realistic solution to the problem.  

[taxme]

6 hours ago, blackbird said:

Canada closed mental institutions years ago and released most of the mental health patients into society in the naive belief that communities would take care of them.

It never happened.

And in the case of the Vancouver car ramming of the Filipinon celebration on Saturday, eleven people were killed and at least twenty people seriously injured.

It could have been avoided because this offender had numerous interactions with police and mental health authorities yet was not involuntarily committed.

"If the suspect, Kai-ji Adam Lo, 30, is found not criminally responsible and sentenced to psychiatric care, instead of prison, he will be institutionalized, like he should have been in the first place. In this case, the outcome of our more “compassionate” approach to mental health is disturbing."

Car ramming suspect should have never been free in the first place | National Post

So far, i believe that Canada is plenty full of people with left wing lieberal mental issues. A prime example of that mental illness in Canada is that, thanks to all of those lefty lieberals out there, they just went and put in another Turdeau called Corney in power. So, what else can one believe. Mental illness is quite rampant in Canada today. If that is not a sign of mental illness, then what is? It will be the same old, same old but now it will be even worse. Enjoy. LOL.

[CdnFox]

1 hour ago, TreeBeard said:

I think we need WAY more community mental health care workers.  That’s exactly where the dollars need to go.  Raise taxes to do it. 
 

Locking people up isn’t a realistic solution to the problem.  

 taxes can't go any higher. Investment fleeing Canada, growing unemployment and we only grew 1.4% in the last 10 years. If anything we have to significantly reduce taxes just to survive. Not to mention the money we're going to have to pay back on interest on all the crap we borrow

If you wanted a not lock them up solution you needed to come up with that before we got to this point

[eyeball]

1 hour ago, CdnFox said:

Then locking them up becomes the only option. You can't let these people wander around and kill folks.

Judges have made it clear simply locking them up is not an option because they know in the absence of proper medical facilities that means a return to prison-like institutional conditions that violate people's rights as patients not to mention their human rights. 

The numbers of people who do something threatening or violent is miniscule compared to the numbers of people who just wander around.  It also needs to be said that mentally ill people suffer far more violence at the hands of ordinary people than the other way around.  Just looking at it from a cold calculating actuarial perspective says the chances of being a victim are so small that the cost of locking them up not to mention taking away their rights isn't even worth considering compared to the inhumane conditions they would be subjected to.    

If however the health system had an adequate number of well-funded psychiatric hospitals and facilities capable of meeting at the very least the same standards and safeguards any other patient in the medical system expects, judges might be more amenable to medical and legal advice that prescribes the suspension of a person's rights to their freedom is occasionally appropriate.

At any given time you can be sure virtually every psych ward in every hospital is maxed out as is every available space in a long-term care facility.  Prisons and jails are not an option.

[eyeball]

15 minutes ago, CdnFox said:

 taxes can't go any higher. Investment fleeing Canada, growing unemployment and we only grew 1.4% in the last 10 years. If anything we have to significantly reduce taxes just to survive. Not to mention the money we're going to have to pay back on interest on all the crap we borrow

If you wanted a not lock them up solution you needed to come up with that before we got to this point

Nope, we just live with it like we live with the risk of dying in a plane crash or having a bolt of lightning strike us.  The risk of dying at the hands of a mentally ill person is that remote.

In the meantime I think it's clear taxes are nowhere near high enough to meet the needs of most modern advanced democracies these days including ours. We need to make binding agreements with other peer nations to insure tax rates and rules are more universal, to deter being played off against one another in a race to the bottom that only degrades all our society's qualities of life.  

Edited April 29 by eyeball

[CdnFox]

5 minutes ago, eyeball said:

Judges have made it clear simply locking them up is not an option because they know in the absence of proper medical facilities that means a return to prison-like institutional conditions that violate people's rights as patients not to mention their human rights. 

Too bad we spend all our money on climate change and safe supply. We can find a way to lock them up anyway.

At the end of the day we don't have any more money. We can't tax more, the liberals are already on planning on spending us into Oblivion, our debt to GDP is climbing to dangerous levels, and our economy is slowing down.

You have to pick your battles

7 minutes ago, eyeball said:

The numbers of people who do something threatening or violent is miniscule compared to the numbers of people who just wander around. 

If they have negative interactions with the police lock them up. If they're just wandering around leave them alone. The crime isn't having mental health issues the crime is becoming dangerous

8 minutes ago, eyeball said:

If however the health system had an adequate number of well-funded psychiatric hospitals and facilities capable of meeting at the very least the same standards and safeguards any other patient in the medical system expects, judges might be more amenable to medical and legal advice that prescribes the suspension of a person's rights to their freedom is occasionally appropriate.

Well you should have thought of that before you blew our money on climate change and safe supply.

You can't have these things if you run our economy into the ground with other woke agenda policies that behave like an anchor on our economic engines.

You think that there's an infinite magic money want and there isn't. If you want to have this kind of compassionate service you have to have an extremely healthy economy producing at a high level of efficiency so that there's room in the tax base to be able to pay for it. And you can't be wasting money on useless programs like safe supply that just simply got a whole bunch of high schoolers addicted to drugs while we watched fentanyl deaths Skyrocket through the roof

We'll just find something else to charge them with and lock them up for that. Shouldn't be too hard.

1 minute ago, eyeball said:

Nope, we just live with it like we live with the risk of dying in a plane crash or having a bolt of lightning strike us.  The risk of dying at the hands of a mentally ill person is that remote.

Now we'll just lock them up. People are already starting to call for it. Turns out that you kill a bunch of 5-year-olds and such at a festival with a car and it upsets some folk. I know you're fine with it but a lot of people aren't and they're getting angry

[blackbird]

We need to build many mental institutions and start committing mentally ill people who have interactions with the police and the mental health department.  It is time to put the protection of society first and stop this madness of allowing dangerous offenders to go out and kill eleven people at a time and seriously injure another twenty. 

As it is, authorities are releasing dangerous offenders such as the Greyhound bus passenger who decapitated the guy sitting next to him and was later released.  Who can predict the future as to what these people might do?  Nobody;  not the best psychiatrists or doctors or committees can predict what a mentally unstable person will do if they are released.  It is impossible.  

The so-called not criminally responsible (NCR) defence should be abolished as well.  Stop this madness and bring back true justice.  Canada is sending the wrong message to would be killers that they can get away with anything they wish.  Stop the beheadings, the car rammers, the stabbings and assaults.  Bring back capital punishment for murder without an escape hatch.  Put fear into the equation.

Edited April 30 by blackbird

[eyeball]

On 4/29/2025 at 4:38 PM, CdnFox said:

Well you should have thought of that before you blew our money on climate change and safe supply.

[eyeball]

7 hours ago, blackbird said:

The so-called not criminally responsible (NCR) defence should be abolished as well.  Stop this madness and bring back true justice.  Canada is sending the wrong message to would be killers that they can get away with anything they wish.  Stop the beheadings, the car rammers, the stabbings and assaults.  Bring back capital punishment for murder without an escape hatch.  Put fear into the equation.

Ain't going to happen. It's probably best you just stay inside and lock your doors. Or you could just get a grip.

[blackbird]

1 hour ago, eyeball said:

Ain't going to happen. It's probably best you just stay inside and lock your doors. Or you could just get a grip.

Thanks for the tip.   I will keep the doors locked.

I thought the forum is the place to post real ideas to solve some of the problems we have in the world.  

 

Edited May 1 by blackbird