Nine Game-Changers of 2010 So Far

With the sound defeat of a bill seeking to legalize euthanasia, 2010 will be seen as a turning point in the debate on the issue.

In June 2010, Bloc MP Francine Lalonde’s private member’s bill seeking to legalize euthanasia and physician-assisted suicide was soundly defeated 228 votes to 59.

But the issue is still very much alive, especially in Quebec. In December 2009, the Quebec Legislative Assembly authorized the Health and Social Services Commission to undertake a consultation on the question of “dying with dignity.” The public consultation phase of this enquiry is currently taking place.

Surveys show that among Canadians, Quebecers are most in favour of legalizing euthanasia (a term I use to include physician-assisted suicide). And one assumes the Quebec government must believe it has a claim to jurisdiction over euthanasia, since the consultation, while not limited to euthanasia, includes it (“dying with dignity” is a euphemism advocates use for euthanasia).

At present, euthanasia is prohibited under the Canadian Criminal Code, which of course is federal jurisdiction. If the consultation report is in favour of legalizing euthanasia, my guess is that Quebec will challenge the Criminal Code prohibition on the basis that it trespasses on provincial jurisdiction with respect to health and social services. Quebec will argue that euthanasia is “medical treatment,” a description already used by the Quebec College of Physicians and Surgeons. If this challenge is successful, we will then likely see Quebec as “separate” from the rest of Canada on this critically important issue – an issue central to the shared values on which we base our society.

These values have always been formed around birth and death - the two great events in each human life – and the euthanasia debate will decide whether these values will change. That’s the reason this debate is a momentous one. It involves our individual and collective past (the ethical, legal, and cultural norms and values that have been handed down to us as members of families, groups, and societies); the present (whether we will change those norms and values); and the future (the impact that this would have on those who come after us).

We need to place and keep death in a moral context, not just a legal one, important as the latter is. The legalization of euthanasia would seriously threaten our capacity to do that.

We can predict the consequences of making this act legal by looking at what happened following the legalization of abortion – it lost its moral context. As the Archbishop of Canterbury says, we have lost our sense that abortion involves a “major moral choice” – when one third of pregnancies in Europe end in abortion, it’s clear that it has been “normalized.” This is also true in Canada, where abortion has gone from being a rare exception to a norm. The same would happen with euthanasia. As an aside, whatever our stance on abortion, that abortion has become a norm should be of concern to all of us.

In light of Canada’s aging population and scarce and increasingly expensive healthcare resources, which will present us with many difficult decisions about who lives and who dies, keeping death and dying in a moral context is crucial. In debating euthanasia, we need to ask many questions, but three of the most important are: Would legalization be more likely to help us or hinder us in the search for meaning in our individual and collective lives? How do we want our grandchildren and great-grandchildren to die? And, in relation to human death, what kind of values and culture do we want to pass on? The best answers to all these questions strongly indicate that we should not legalize euthanasia. I believe that in the future, we will see 2010 as a turning point in the euthanasia debate, one way or the other.