When – or perhaps if – Canadians think about “foreign aid”, they probably imagine idealistic aid workers treating patients in a remote health clinic, a technical expert designing a new bridge or perhaps an academic offering advice on operating fair courts of law. But these are all being pushed into the background as ideology takes over the planning and provision of Canada’s foreign assistance programs. Not only have bridges and tractors given way to morning-after pills and wind turbines, but aid programs are being shaped to serve only certain kinds of people. The kinds Liberals like. Anna Farrow charts the radical remaking of foreign assistance in which Canada uses foreign aid to interfere in the domestic politics and local cultures of recipient countries, turning the mild-mannered middle power into a practitioner of coercive diplomacy and cultural imperialism – arguably even neo-colonialism.

That elderly nursing home residents represent a large proportion of Covid-19 fatalities is a familiar if sad fact to most Canadians. Even sadder and more disturbing would be if many of those deaths were avoidable. And if some were deliberate, it would be shocking and outrageous. In this investigative piece, Anna Farrow explores the widespread use of “population triage” in several jurisdictions during the pandemic’s early months. While healthcare establishments seemed woefully unprepared in nearly all respects, Farrow found they were lightning-quick to adopt what amounted to killer protocols on thousands of elderly and vulnerable citizens. This included not merely the withholding of advanced care but end-of-life measures using fatal drug cocktails.