Recent opinion polls show the PQ has a strong chance of moving from a minority government to majority when Quebec goes to the polls April 7.
“I think the PQ has a dual agenda to establish a secularist, separatist society,” said McGill University bio-ethicist Margaret Somerville. “The two goals are complementary.”
The charter — which would ban any person working in the public sector from wearing identifiable religious symbols such as the Muslim hijab, the Jewish kippah or the Sikh turban — and euthanasia both reflect secularist values, and they “would identify Quebec values as being very different from the values of the rest of Canada,” said Somerville, founding director of the McGill Centre for Medicine, Ethics and the Law.
“We form a society by buying into shared values,” she said. To the extent euthanasia and the charter are not shared by the rest of Canada, “we unbind ourselves by rejecting those shared values.”
McGill University historian John Zucchi points out a recent CROP poll that asks a clear question on separation shows 61 per cent of Quebeckers would vote against sovereignty if a referendum were held right now and only 39 per cent would vote for it.
But that has been part of the PQ strategy on all three issues, he said. The PQ has resorted to “political trickery and ambiguous language on all three of these issues.”
“If they are going to push for euthanasia, call it euthanasia,” Zucchi said.
The fact the charter resonates among native-born francophone Quebeckers, who are largely baptized but non-practising Catholics, “perhaps points to the way in which nationalism can trump one’s religious loyalties if the Church does not maintain an awareness of who it is,” he said.
“If one’s Christian identity is not kept alive, one will seek the essence of one’s identity elsewhere, so we end up worrying less about our humanity and ‘the last things’ and more about our national identity,” he said.
Dr. Marc Beauchamp, a Montreal- based orthopedic surgeon and president of the grassroots anti-euthanasia group Living with Dignity, points out all the PQ needs to win a majority government is 39 per cent of the electorate.
No political party wants to make euthanasia an election issue, he said. No one knows the true level of opposition to euthanasia in the province since it has been called “medical aid in dying.’”
“There is probably a bigger number than we think would really not be in favour of backing someone who will say, ‘Vote for me and I will make sure doctors will kill their patients,’ ” he said.
The problem for Living with Dignity and the Physicians’ Alliance against Euthanasia to which he belongs is they have only 30 days to get the message out.
Over the past three years, Living with Dignity has not achieved its objective of convincing people to use “understandable language,” he said.
“It’s really troubling for anyone who has some affection for democracy or truth,” Beauchamp said. Whether it’s euthanasia, the charter or separation, “everyone hopes to push forward their projects” without clearly telling the people what they want to do.
Even if the PQ does not opt for a referendum on independence right away should it win a majority, passage of both euthanasia and the charter is expected.
Neither would be constitutional under the Canadian constitution, Beauchamp pointed out. If euthanasia passes, his group will fight the matter in the courts.
Nic Steenhout, Living with Dignity’s executive director, does not want euthanasia to become an election issue because of the high level of confusion out there.
“A lot of education has to happen before people understand what the real issues are,” he said.
In the debate over Bill-52, Somerville said the PQ argued that religion “has no basis to form values of a secular, or more accurately secularist, society and individual personal autonomy is the dominant value.” Yet many of the other projects the PQ supports respect autonomy, she noted, such as where you can send your children to school, or how you run your business.
Zucchi points out none of the three parties, the PQ, the Liberal Party or the Coalition Avenir Québec, offer much of an alternative on either euthanasia or the charter.
“Even the Liberals have been disappointing,” he said. “They have seemed to follow popular sentiments rather than to lead on these two issues.”
Among the Liberals, however, about 30 MNAs had “strong reservations” on euthanasia, he said.
Zucchi noted Quebec’s Catholic bishops, especially Cardinal Gérard Lacroix in Quebec City and Archbishop Christian Lépine in Montreal, have spoken out not only against euthanasia but also against the charter. Both have indicated the “state has no business interfering in the lives of its citizens the way (charter) Bill-60 was proposing,” he said.
“Catholic voters should be taking the positions of their bishops very seriously,” he said.