On Saturday, October 30, Jon Stewart hosted his Rally to Restore Sanity on the National Mall in Washington, D.C. Today, two Tribune editors face off on whether Jon Stewart has anything important to contribute to American political debate.

Logan Smith

Margaret Somerville, founding director of the McGill Centre for Medicine, Ethics, and Law, recently  testified at the Quebec National Assembly hearings. She sat down with the Tribune to share some of her thoughts on euthanasia.

Why have you taken such an active role against euthanasia?

It is the single most important issue that we ever face because it affects everybody. Although there are many other important issues, we are never going to design every child. We aren’t going to use reproductive technology for everybody. If you institute euthanasia, everybody could be subject to it. In a way, even if you aren’t affected by euthanasia, it goes to the most fundamental of our societal values [the] respect for every human life. If we institutionalize euthanasia, we cross that Rubicon. We change that norm.

 The House of Lords in England say the foundation stone of this civilized society is that we don’t kill each other. Even if you don’t think euthanasia is wrong, it does more harm than good for our society. And what you hope to achieve for a person by euthanasia you can do by good palliative care and if nothing else is possible, palliative sedation. You give them sedatives so they don’t feel the situation, given that they give you their permission and that there is no other way to stop their suffering.

What is the distinction between euthanasia and allowing someone to die naturally?

Pulling the plug is not euthanasia. In pulling the plug you have treatment that is not effective to maintain the person because they’re dying, and what you’re doing, some say, is prolonging their dying, not prolonging their living. And what we do is care for them, but if they say, “No, enough is enough,” everyone in Canada has the right to refuse treatment. There is no obligation to receive treatment.

There is a great deal of confusion—not just with the public. Even the doctors are confused. I’ve asked doctors “Have you administered euthanasia?” and some of the doctors [say] yes. When you ask them to tell you what they did, it turns out they didn’t do euthanasia. When you find out they’re doing things like giving adequate pain relief treatment, it’s not euthanasia. We’ve been trying really hard to get doctors to give adequate pain relief treatment because one of the main reasons people get euthanasia is because they just can’t cope with the pain. The latest research shows that proper pain relief actually prolongs your life. Which makes sense, since not all your psychological resources are being used to cope with the pain.

What would be the implications of legalizing euthanasia in Canada?

What we have to ask is: “What do we have to do to hold our values on trust for future generations?” Even if we wouldn’t misuse this now in rare cases where there really isn’t something else we can do, what is likely to happen in the future is really frightening. The evidence we’ve got of that is the Netherlands. They went from saying “It’s rare. It’s only going to be eligible adults in chronic pain. They’ve got to be terminally ill, and they have to repeatedly say they want to do it, and they have to give their full consent.” Now, not one of those conditions apply. They just put a petition in parliament that says if you’re over 70 and you’re tired of life, you can have euthanasia. The courts hold that if a psychiatrist killed a 55-year-old woman because she said she’s depressed, that’s justified euthanasia.

What we’ve lost is any sense of the mystery of life. We’ve gone to a total scientism—that we’re just a bunch of functioning molecules, a sort of “Genes ‘R Us.” Once the machine has stopped working, as one Australian politician said, “When you’ve passed your ‘best before’ or ‘used by’ date, you should be chucked out as quickly, cleanly and efficiently as possible.”

If we lose the sense that death is a big deal, we’re likely to lose the sense that life is a big deal, and if we lose the sense that life is a big deal, we’ve lost everything. We lose our ability to find meaning. We lose our ability to find awe, allure, and mystery. We won’t just dehumanize ourselves; we’ll encourage suicide by making it a norm. The people who want euthanasia have a condition that psychiatrists call hopelessness. They think that there’s absolutely nothing to look forward to, that there is no joy or anything good in life.

Due to an incident of drunken buffoonery and stupidity, I spent the better part of last weekend, from October 22nd until the 25th, lying around my apartment on couches and beds with a tensor bandage around my swollen, bruised, painful left ankle. Ice was applied. Medicine was taken (as was “medicine”). After three full days indoors with no fresh air and the lingering stench of stale bong water, empty beer cans, and cooked food, I began to experience early-onset cabin fever. When the weather is unseasonably warm, and I can see the sun shining through the windows, I certainly don’t want to be stuck inside. But, of course, I was, and had to live with it. I also missed two unrecorded classes of philosophy and Shakespeare. While this may not be an incredible loss, it did bring me to think how unnecessary it is to skip a class just because you “don’t wanna go,” when some of us who want to go to every class and enjoy the opportunity (and ability) to do so can’t because of unforeseen circumstances.

Although my scholarly Monday was a complete failure, I did end up watching a movie of such wonderful scope and brilliance that the day didn’t seem like a complete loss: Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. I laughed, I was riveted, I got up (slowly and painfully) and hopped my way into the kitchen to make myself a Nutella sandwich right after the rescue of Jones’s father (Sean Connery, naturally). Afterwards, I lay back, scoured Wikipedia, and listened to Illmatic while waiting for my roommates to come home before watching copious episodes of South Park.

If this had been a Sunday, I would have liked nothing more than to watch the movie while lounging in a bathrobe, incapacitated due to my inability to keep from jumping off stationary objects. However, on a Monday, I know there is class, and knowing I was missing class made me more anxious than the prospect that my ankle could quite possibly be broken (it’s not).

While I sympathize with people who skip class in order to study or finish assignments and papers, or who skip recorded classes because they know they’ll have the opportunity to revisit these lectures exactly as they happened, skipping lecture with no legitimate reason seems to me a bigger waste of time than actually going to class. Taking the necessary steps to retrieve notes and catch up on lectures is as wasteful as one can get, not simply when it comes to time, but, more importantly, money. Remember, you’re paying for every course (or your parents are) and skipping class is like throwing money in the garbage.

You skippers should re-evaluate what it means to skip class when you’re watching that episode of The Wire you simply had to watch (which, I admit, is amazing and slightly excusable) instead of going to that unrecorded class where the professor tells everyone exactly what they should study in order to do well on the exam.

Learn to like class, to enjoy your professors’ jokes they told in the same class in the same context last year, and to relish the centuries-old tradition of scholarly and intellectual exploration. Or say fuck it and watch that episode of The Wire. It is amazing, after all.

Two weeks ago, the Students’ Society held its  annual General Assembly. The whole thing was depressing. I went at precisely the time it was to begin, and the first thing that struck me was the line.

Remember the GA last semester? If you weren’t there at least an hour early, you weren’t getting in. A motion criticizing Israel was on the agenda, and both sides of the perennial debate had come out in full force. The room was packed beyond capacity. Everyone left after the Israel debate, so only a little more than 100 people voted on free speech for pro-life students on campus. Depressing, I know.

At this semester’s GA, the line barely had 10 people in it. Entering the room, there were around 20. Over the course of the entire GA, we hovered in and out of a measly quorum (100 people) that we could barely maintain.

The GA makes a mockery of the democratic process. A fundamental principle of democracy is consent of the governed: laws should reflect the consent of those who are ruled by them. At the GA this year, 100 unelected people dictated policy to the 21,000 students that form SSMU. Think about that for a moment. As one of those attending, I represented 210 of my fellow students. All I did to earn that right was to walk through the door.

The room that hosts the GA holds, at most, a little over 500 people. But what if 2000 people lined up outside the door? SSMU would inevitably have to turn many away. The result would be damning: one person’s vote would be denied because they didn’t get there in time.

Don’t take this as an indictment of direct democracy. On the contrary, the referendum process offers a chance to vote on matters of student concern. It is the highest fulfillment of the principle of consent of the governed.

The GA is not a direct democracy. The restrictions of occupying a physical space means that the GA is limited in its ability to represent students. Past years have shown us that special interest groups can exploit the GA process for their own ends. A controversial motion, like the Israel motion last semester, can fill a GA quickly.

But instead of being a forum for debate, GAs are about stacking the cards. If my group can bring more of our people, we will win, and you will lose. Instead of competing to convince students on the basis of solid arguments, GAs are competitions to fill the room. Does that sound like democracy to you?

The physical limitations of the GA are simply impossible to overcome. They will never carry the weight and legitimacy of referendums. They need to go.

SSMU President Zach Newburgh faced several questions about attendance at the General Assembly this year. In response, he revealed his intention to strike a committee on reforming the GA process. This is a positive first step, and its final goal should be unequivocal: the end of the GA.

In fact, the president, a member of the executive, or one of our elected councillors should table a motion calling for the discontinuation of the SSMU General Assembly. I just hope one of them has the courage to do it.