It is common to conceive that when it comes to medical assistance in dying, we are at the cutting edge of the avant-garde. In Quebec, recourse to legalized euthanasia is practiced, all things considered, more than in any other country in the world. To come to the aid of overwhelmed hospitals and to remedy the lack of places in palliative care homes, funeral companies now intend to offer patients to die directly at home. Convenient. Save time and money by already being at your embalming site.
Faced with the repeated stories of so many people who complain of having seen their loved ones treated like dogs in the last days of their lives, is it any wonder that a very large portion of the Quebec population subscribes to the idea that she can, at least, decide to escape the claws of a dehumanized death?
The director and actress Micheline Lanctôt has just told how her spouse died following a stay in a hospital setting that looked like a tragic fair. A few months ago, Andrée Simard, heiress of a powerful family and widow of Premier Robert Bourassa, died in hospital in distressing conditions, in great pain, deprived of palliative care, so to speak. If such an end is the lot of prominent individuals, what fate awaits the anonymous, the rankless, that is to say the bulk of the population?
Popular support for physician-assisted dying needs to be viewed in light of the structural flaws plaguing our health care system. In some ways, planned death looks like a last resort. That assisted dying is so popular at a time when failures are accumulating in this system is somewhat reminiscent of a blind vote of confidence offered by activists to a leader capable of promising them the moon nevertheless, as if nothing had happened. By considering a hopeless situation, as long as it is dressed in golden sequins, they believe it is possible to forget the general darkness in which they are nevertheless plunged.
At 98.5 FM, the former politician Luc Ferrandez argued the other morning, at the microphone of Paul Arcand, that the extension of the practice of medical assistance in dying could, in the long term, finally free the State from the burden of lives deemed useless… Will this perspective impose itself quietly, although it still has trouble calling itself for what it is, that is to say an infamy?
Our general adherence to the principle of euthanasia in any case demonstrates a new relationship to the idea of dignity, freedom and suffering. It is difficult to conceive that these perspectives are not colored by the weight of a society that is more individualistic than ever, where the idea that a sick or suffering person constitutes a burden, too heavy a burden for others as much as for institutions. Thus, perhaps what appears to us to be liberating is in fact only one more submission to a general system that only fuels the accomplishments of productivity, profitability, consumption.
In any case, this rapid development of a new relationship to death is not without raising several paradoxes. How can we explain the means that we devote, for example, to suicide prevention, while we demonstrate, moreover, an almost complete adherence to respect for the will of other people who want to escape, not without reason, also in life? We claim the right to die for the old and the vulnerable, but we deny it to the young, the active, the productive. The dilemmas posed by this gap are significant.
Medical aid in dying is sometimes presented to us as a form of supreme solidarity with regard to those who are at the end of their life. But is this really the case, when you think about it, in a system where everything is cracking up, for lack of means, in the name of economic imperatives that are endlessly illustrated by the unfulfilled promises of the multiple reforms of the health network?
What is a good death in society? Euthanasia, now legitimized, does not, however, eliminate major social divisions. Every year, people continue to die alone, in the most perfect indifference. They die like dogs. Their life vanishes like dust swept under the rug. Quantity of bodies are not even claimed. In collaboration with the police, the coroner conducts research to connect them to their community. Often in vain.
What kind of life was yours, when at the end, no one was interested even in your remains? What neighborhoods did these people live in? In what conditions ? Randomly, I note some of the names of these unclaimed bodies, as the long list scrolls before my eyes:
Stéphane Belanger, from Joliette. Died March 22, 2023. Unclaimed.
Carole Leclerc, from Montreal. Died September 29, 2022. Unclaimed.
Steve Claveau, of Montreal. Died October 16, 2022. Unclaimed.
Jean-Marc Michaud, from Longueuil. Died January 3, 2023. Unclaimed.
David Sandoval. Out of nowhere, it seems. Died on January 10, last year. Not demanded.
These people were all in their fifties. They are dead, forgotten each in their corner.
In Quebec, Gilles Kègle organizes, with a foundation that bears his name, funerals for bodies that no one wanted to take care of. He also does it for families so needy that they don’t even have enough to bury their loved ones. To date, his foundation has taken care of the funerals of more than a thousand bodies. A thousand deaths whose lives society cared little about.
How does a society get out of this misery to which such abandonment testifies? What new social perspectives do we need to know how to instil so that we finally know more dignity collectively, in our lifetime?