Those were the words Allison Ducluzeau, 57, said she was told in January, a month after being diagnosed with a rare and terminal abdominal cancer.
After several weeks of consultations and inconclusive tests, the British Columbia resident said a surgeon told her she was not eligible for surgery and she might only have between two months and two years left to live.
“I felt completely hopeless and powerless and (at) a complete loss about what to do with my health,” Ducluzeau told CTVNews.ca in a phone interview on Saturday.
Ducluzeau started researching options to tackle her illness within Canada and found out she required a time-sensitive, specialized surgery to treat her Stage 4 cancer. That’s when her general practitioner referred her to cancer specialists.
From there, she was told she would have to wait almost two months for an initial consultation with a specialized surgeon in Vancouver.
But she’d been told she might only survive another two months, suggesting the consultation might be too late.
So, the mother of two started looking for options outside of the country.
Ducluzeau eventually landed on the Mercy Medical Center in Baltimore, Md., where she met with a specialist one week after sending the results of an imaging test that detects early signs of cancer. She was told she could have the abdominal surgery done two weeks later.
Her husband accompanied her on the trip in February, for the procedure she described as her last resort.
Allison Ducluzeau and her husband leaving to the U.S. from Canada for surgery on Jan. 28, 2023 (Submitted)After the surgery in the U.S., Ducluzeau said she learned that if she had stayed in Canada, waiting to meet with the Vancouver surgeon, there would have been a wait of six to eight weeks to have the operation done in Vancouver, in addition to the two months she had to wait for the consultation.
By her calculations, she believes she had surgery approximately three months earlier than the best-case scenario in B.C., because of her trip to the States.
And based on the timeline given to her when she was diagnosed, she may not have survived long enough to have the surgery in Canada.
“I never should have had to travel away from the support of family and friends,” said Ducluzeau. “But (there) was not an alternative. It was that or go home and prepare to die.”
Ducluzea’s experience is not unique. With long wait times becoming a defining characteristic of Canada’s health-care system, many Canadians are taking matters into their own hands by travelling outside of the country to get surgeries and other medical procedures done sooner.
HOW LONG IS THE WAIT?
Each province and territory is responsible for administrating and delivering health care to its residents, meaning the average wait times for surgeries and other procedures vary across the country.
The pan-Canadian benchmark for a hip replacement surgery is 26 weeks, or 182 days, according to the Canadian Institute for Health Information. But based on the provinces’ and territories’ own electronic wait time estimates, most patients wait longer than that.
Ontario had the lowest waiting times, based on these trackers, with an average of 87 days between the time of referral to the first consultation, and 138 days for hip surgery. B.C. and Newfoundland and Labrador indicated nine in 10 patients are waiting an average of 348 and 385 days for hip surgery, respectively.
P.E.I., Saskatchewan and Nova Scotia had some of the longest wait times, with 90 per cent of patients waiting more than 600 days for their orthopaedic surgery.
Alberta also had among the longest wait times indicated, with nine in 10 patients waiting an average of 80 weeks, or 560 days, for hip replacement surgery.
‘ONCE YOU START WAITING, OTHER THINGS START TO BREAK DOWN’
For Edmonton resident Trevor Bukieda, 60, waiting for surgery meant enduring agonizing pain.
Bukieda said he started feeling pain in his hip four years ago. The initial X-rays and ultrasound showed minor joint wear, so after a cortisone injection, he continued on with his life. But he said the pain intensified and became unbearable in March of this year.
He had new X-rays done, which he says showed that his hip had totally degenerated, and there was no cartilage left at all.
In an attempt to ease the pain, Bukieda said, he contacted an Alberta clinic that specializes in hips and knees in hopes of having his injury treated. Three weeks later, he said, he received a letter saying he had been accepted for an appointment to see a surgeon in 14 to 16 months. The actual hip replacement surgery would’ve taken another nine months’ wait, he told CTVNews.ca.
Losing patience, Bukieda started looking for out-of-country options and found a clinic in Kaunas, Lithuania, that could take him in as soon as July, three months after his most recent X-rays.
“The biggest reason why I chose to go overseas is because once you start waiting, other things start to break down in your system,” Bukieda said.
Before the surgery, Bukieda said, his joints were getting worse as the balance compensation to avoid pain in his left hip started to affect both of his knees and other hip.
Sarunas Tarasevicius, hip surgeon and head of orthopedics at Nordorthopaedics in Lithuania, said this is common; the quality of life of a patient worsens the longer they wait for surgery.
“Those patients who are operated on later need more effort to make those muscles work again properly,” he said. “And the recovery might be significantly slower compared to those who had surgery done on time.”
Tarasevicius told CTVNews.ca in an interview that his clinic welcomes at least 10 Canadians each month for surgery, and he is expecting a 40 per cent increase in Canadian patient volumes this year.
Bukieda’s hip replacement surgery in Lithuania fortunately went well and he is now recovering in his home in Edmonton. In total, he said he spent 10 nights overseas and paid approximately $12,862 for the surgery.
Trevor Bukieda and his family travelled to Kaunas, Lithuania for his hip replacement in July, 2023. (Submitted)
HEALTH CANADA CITES PANDEMIC BACKLOG
In an emailed statement, a spokesperson for Health Canada told CTVNews.ca that there are many pressing needs in the health-care system including addressing backlogs that were exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic.
Canadians had to wait a median of 27.4 weeks between the referral from a general practitioner and receiving treatment in 2022, the survey found. By comparison, they waited just 9.3 weeks in 1993.
In an attempt to reduce the wait times, Health Canada said the federal government is “working with provinces and territories to improve the collection, use and sharing of health information.”
Part of that work has included dedicating a $2-billion fund for provinces and territories to address immediate pressures on the health-care system, such as in pediatric hospitals and emergency rooms, as well as long wait times for surgeries, the department said, citing an announcement made in July.
“No one should have to travel abroad or to a different province and pay to receive the care they need in a timely manner,” Health Canada said in the statement.
‘THIS IS MY LAST CHANCE’
For some Canadians, travelling outside of the country seems to be their last bit of hope.
Sena Gurbuz said she was nearly paralyzed because of back problems. For years, neurosurgeons could not come to a conclusion as to what was causing her pain.
“It got to the point where I had to buy a wheelchair,” Gurbuz told CTVNews.ca on Wednesday, explaining she could only sleep two hours a night.
Then, one day in December 2021, she started bleeding uncontrollably.
“The test showed I had polyps (small growths of excess tissue) in my uterus and they were precancerous,” she said. “My gynecologist at the time was freaking out because she didn’t do the type of surgery I needed.”
After another round of tests, Gurbuz said, doctors told her she also had an umbilical hernia, meaning she was in need of three different surgeries — all with different wait times.
Wait times for these types of treatments too vary across the country. In Quebec, the average wait time for a gynecological surgery at the hospital closest to Gurbuz is between 11 and 15 weeks, according to provincial data, a timeframe that does not include the wait for consultation.
Orthopedic surgeries have an average wait of between 19 to 49 weeks, depending on the procedures.
Gurbuz said was given a two-year wait for the robotic surgery needed to remove the precancerous cells in her body.
“It was my ultimatum,” she said. “I’m either going to end up with cancer and it’s going to be too late … and if I don’t have back surgery I’m going to end up permanently in a wheelchair. That’s what was going on in my head: ‘This is my last chance.’”
Last August, Gurbuz and her girlfriend took out a loan, hired a medical visitor co-ordinator and booked a two-month trip to Istanbul, Turkiye, where Gurbuz had three different surgeries — two done on the same day and a third one month later.
“Everything went very well. I found the doctors and hospitals and staff all of the highest standard,” she told CTVNews.ca.
In total, Gurbuz said, the trip and surgeries cost her $50,000.
“I was able to walk without a cane after three days of back surgery,” she said.
While some Canadians report having successful stories abroad, the spokesperson for Health Canada stressed that there are “medical and financial risks” linked to receiving care outside of Canada.
“Before taking such a decision, we invite patients to consider the risks,” they said.
WINNIPEG – A court has been asked to declare Lake Winnipeg a person with constitutional rights to life, liberty and security of person in a case that may go further than any other in trying to establish the rights of nature in Canada.
“It really is that simple,” said Grand Chief Jerry Daniels of the Manitoba Southern Chiefs’ Organization, which filed the suit Thursday in Court of King’s Bench in Winnipeg.
“The lake has its own rights. The lake is a living being.”
The argument is being used to help force the provincial government to conduct an environmental assessment of how Manitoba Hydro regulates lake levels for power generation. Those licences come up for renewal in August 2026, and the chiefs argue that the process under which those licences were granted was outdated and inadequate.
They quote Manitoba’s Clean Environment Commission, which said in 2015 that the licences were granted on the basis of poor science, poor consultation and poor public accountability.
Meanwhile, the statement of claim says “the (plaintiffs) describe the lake’s current state as being so sick that she is dying.”
It describes a long list of symptoms.
Fish species have disappeared, declined, migrated or become sick and inedible, the lawsuit says. Birds and wildlife including muskrat, beavers, duck, geese, eagles and gulls are vanishing from the lake’s wetlands.
Foods and traditional medicines — weekay, bulrush, cattail, sturgeon and wild rice — are getting harder to find, the document says, and algae blooms and E. coli bacteria levels have increased.
Invasive species including zebra mussels and spiny water fleas are now common, the document says.
“In Anishinaabemowin, the (plaintiffs) refer to the water in Lake Winnipeg as moowaakamiim (the water is full of feces) or wiinaagamin (the water is polluted, dirty and full of garbage),” the lawsuit says.
It blames many of the problems on Manitoba Hydro’s management of the lake waters to prevent it flushing itself clean every year.
“She is unable to go through her natural cleansing cycle and becomes stagnant and struggles to sustain other beings like animals, birds, fish, plants and people,” the document says.
The defendants, Manitoba Hydro and the provincial government, have not filed statements of defence. Both declined to comment on the lawsuit.
Daniels said it makes sense to consider the vast lake — one of the world’s largest — as alive.
“We’re living in an era of reconciliation, there’s huge changes in the mindsets of regular Canadians and science has caught up a lot in understanding. It’s not a huge stretch to understand the lake as a living entity.”
The idea has been around in western science since the 1970s. The Gaia hypothesis, which remains highly disputed, proposed the Earth is a single organism with its own feedback loops that regulate conditions and keep them favourable to life.
The courts already recognize non-human entities such as corporations as persons.
Personhood has also been claimed for two Canadian rivers.
Quebec’s Innu First Nation have claimed that status for the Magpie River, and the Athabasca Chipewyan First Nation in Alberta is seeking standing for the Athabasca River in regulatory hearings. The Magpie’s status hasn’t been tested in court and Alberta’s energy regulator has yet to rule on the Athabasca.
Matt Hulse, a lawyer who argued the Athabasca River should be treated as a person, noted the Manitoba lawsuit quotes the use of “everyone” in the Charter of Rights and Freedoms.
“The term ‘everyone’ isn’t defined, which could help (the chiefs),” he said.
But the Charter typically focuses on individual rights, Hulse added.
“What they’re asking for is substantive rights to be given to a lake. What does ‘liberty’ mean to a lake?
“Those kinds of cases require a bit of a paradigm shift. I think the Southern Chiefs Organization will face an uphill battle.”
Hulse said the Manitoba case goes further than any he’s aware of in seeking legal rights for a specific environment.
Daniels said he believes the courts and Canadians are ready to recognize humans are not separate from the world in which they live and that the law should recognize that.
“We need to understand our lakes and our environment as something we have to live in cohesion with.”
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 19, 2024.
OTTAWA – MPs on the public safety and national security committee voted unanimously to launch an investigation into an alleged Russian ploy to dupe right-wing influencers into sowing division among Americans.
A U.S. indictment filed earlier this month charged two employees of RT, a Russian state-controlled media outlet, in a US$10-million scheme that purportedly used social media personalities to distribute content with Russian government messaging.
While not explicitly mentioned in court documents, the details match up with Tenet Media, founded by Canadian Lauren Chen and Liam Donovan, who is identified as her husband on social media.
The committee will invite Chen and Donovan to testify on the matter, as well as Lauren Southern, who is among the Tenet cast of personalities.
The motion, which was brought forward by Liberal MP Pam Damoff and passed on Thursday, also seeks to invite civil society representatives and disinformation experts on the matter.
Court documents allege the Russians created a fake investor who provided money to the social media company to hire the influencers, paying the founders significant fees, including through a company account in Canada.
The U.S. Justice Department doesn’t allege any wrongdoing by the influencers.
Following the indictment, YouTube removed several channels associated with Chen, including the Tenet Media channel.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 19, 2024.
OTTAWA – The head of Via Rail repeatedly told MPs a train delay over the Labour Day long weekend was an isolated incident, despite a similar event two years ago.
Mario Péloquin appeared in front of a parliamentary committee Thursday to answer to an incident between Montreal and Quebec City that stranded passengers for 10 hours as they ran out of food, water and working toilets.
MPs pressed Via Rail executives about why the incident occurred even though Via Rail made changes following similar disruptions during the 2022 holiday season.
“Although we know now that it was not a single failure but a series of events, unfortunately, the breakdown of two weeks ago reminds us of what happened in December 2022,” Péloquin said.
“While Via Rail successfully implemented the key learnings and recommendations from 2022, this most recent incident revealed significant shortcomings which we are addressing.”
“I want to reiterate that I am deeply sorry for what happened,” he said.
Péloquin said the delays in 2022 were caused by an ice storm that had caused a tree to fall on the railway, while the latest incident was due to two separate mechanical failures.
Ottawa has already told Via Rail to make changes and asked it to conduct an independent investigation into the incident.
Péloquin said the company has now implemented a new evacuation process, but it wouldn’t have done much good in the latest incident because the train was in an area where evacuation was unsafe.
Conservative MP Philip Lawrence read out a list of previous delays, and asked Péloquin whether he could “with a straight face say this was isolated.”
Péloquin said Via Rail has 20,000 departures a year and 80 per cent arrive on time or within 30 minutes, and that some of those incidents were caused by events outside of Via Rail’s control, such as suspicious packages.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 19, 2024.
Allison Ducluzeau and her husband leaving to the U.S. from Canada for surgery on Jan. 28, 2023 (Submitted)After the surgery in the U.S., Ducluzeau said she learned that if she had stayed in Canada, waiting to meet with the Vancouver surgeon, there would have been a wait of six to eight weeks to have the operation done in Vancouver, in addition to the two months she had to wait for the consultation.
Trevor Bukieda and his family travelled to Kaunas, Lithuania for his hip replacement in July, 2023. (Submitted)
