One is struck by why the euthanasia and assisted suicide issues are so important as to be brought forward at this time in Quebec's history in a roving commission. It is to be hoped that it is because of compassion to reach new definitions in light of pleas from suffering people who wish to terminate their lives. However, reasonable people can be forgiven if they suspect that this issue is being pushed to set new standards to allow a bloated health-care system the right to decide when to terminate life. If there is even one scintilla of truth in that possibility then the whole exercise is venal and obscene.
Let us be clear. Respect for individual choice must be paramount in any free, liberal society. The decriminalization of assisted suicide is a legitimate issue for discussion particularly where it concerns someone's express wishes. But this discussion should not lay the ground work for the state being able to decide when to terminate someone's life, or even to reduce care, based on some actuarial analysis of age or even the state of that person's health just to save the "system" some money. No society has that right, but Quebec particularly is in a state of ongoing moral turpitude on this issue.
Ours is the only political jurisdiction in the western world where over fifty percent of the people paid in our healthcare system are not involved in the delivery of care. They are, instead, faceless bureaucrats looking over the shoulders of doctors and nurses to insure that they stay within the "protocols." The jurisdiction closest to ours in terms of bureaucratization is France and there it is only one-third. If Quebec wants to save money let it heal itself and sack the deadweight of statist autocracy. But of course that would mean lost votes in a society where one out of every four Quebecers works for the state. And what politician would have that moral courage? Quebec, with one fifth of California's population, has four times the number of bureaucrats. And California is the ninth biggest economy in the world. Quebec doesn't even rate.
Euthanasia and assisted suicide must never be allowed out of some perverse social utilitarianism. It can be allowed where it is a matter of free choice. And if a person is incapable of expressing free choice then it is our responsibility as a liberal, compassionate society - that sadly wastes so much money on social engineering - to choose life above all. Without choosing that moral imperative, then all our aspirations toward liberal compassion are nothing more than base hypocrisy.
The United States Supreme Court ruled several years ago that a Florida hospital's attempt to terminate the life of a severely brain injured patient by withdrawing food was a violation of that patient's constitutional guarantees to life and liberty. Well, Canada's Charter may not have the same property rights protection as the US Constitution but we do have the same guarantees to individual life and liberty. We better protect them before we head down the slippery slope where statocratic bean counters decide our lifespans so that they can keep getting their fat salaries and guarantee their fatter pensions.
This is not an abortion issue when we debate when a life is a life. This is not about someone’s right to control their own body. This is not about anyone’s right to choose because there are no instructions on what to choose. This is about what we value as a society.
These hearings should not be about process. They should be about purpose. The purpose of the law being more than merely a two-edged sword of craft and becoming a true shield of innocence.
No person possessed of even a modicum of rational thought can possibly believe that the our medical bureaucrats should be allowed any determination as to when to withdraw care or when life ends . Even Judges do not have any special aptitude that makes them suitable custodians for decisions on matters of life and death. And as for doctors, even the Canadian Medical Association has warned against going any further than respecting expressed wishes.
It is curious how so many who oppose capital punishment - and quite justly - see nothing wrong with opening the door to allowing the very same system to determine life and death for every citizen. How curious that so many animal rights activists do not exhibit the same passion for the protection of human life. What kind of legacy do we leave when we refuse to protect the weakest among us? What kinds of laws are we enshrining when they are devoid of compassion? What kind of a society are we building when expediency is valued over life itself?
We live in a time of addiction to social experimentation and engineering. Addictions so strong that they feed our public agenda with an almost compulsive tyranny. And this compulsion brings us dangerously close to submission to the triumph of opportunistic exploitation.
Medical science has pronounced many people as being beyond hope. And medical science has witnessed countless instances where victims have inexplicably snapped back even from comas that have lasted more than five years. No combination of procedural rule or subversive regulation should ever make the taking of a person’s life free from inherent constitutional protection.
The state can have no legitimate right to destroy something it has not created. Few actions are as heinous as those driven by collectivist arrogance. These hearings must guard against the constitution of a rule and organization to death that is in and of itself a source of moral suffering and moral turpitude.
The late US Senator Hubert Humphrey once said that, “Society is measured by how it treats those in the dawn of life, in the dusk of life but most importantly in the shadow of life.” We as a people cannot allow the darkening of those shadows.
The bottom line is that a free society can say that a person has a right to die, but can never be allowed to say that someone has to die.
