Winnipeg Free Press

Winnipeg Free Press (Newspaper) - June 23, 2012, Winnipeg, Manitoba C M Y K PAGE 16 EDITORIALS WINNIPEG FREE PRESS, SATURDAY, JUNE 23, 2012 Freedom of Trade Liberty of Religion Equality of Civil Rights A 16 COMMENT EDITOR: Gerald Flood 697- 7269 gerald. flood@ freepress. mb. ca winnipegfreepress. com EDITORIAL G LORIA Taylor, who suffers from the degenerative Lou Gehrig's disease, has won the legal right to choose the moment of her death with a doctor's help after a B. C. Supreme Court judge ruled the existing ban on assisted suicide is unconstitutional. The ruling raises a contentious and complex question: must a human life be preserved? It is a question of such profound importance that the federal government must appeal this ruling to the Supreme Court of Canada. On June 15, Madam Justice Lynn Smith found that since 1993, when another British Columbian, Sue Rodriguez, was denied the same right, the law restricting individual liberties in order to protect rights of others has changed. Further, the experience of jurisdictions that permit assisted suicide shows that the vulnerable - those who can be coerced, or those who can't speak for themselves - can be protected. Now, she said, the absolute ban on assisted suicide unnecessarily denied Ms. Taylor's charter rights of liberty and security. In 1993, the Supreme Court in a close 5- 4 decision ruled that any denial of Ms. Rodriguez's liberties was not arbitrary or overbroad, but necessary to protect the vulnerable. Since the early 1990s, although a variety of Canadian bodies have reasserted the necessity of a ban, other jurisdictions, including four countries, have adopted permissive laws. In the Netherlands, doctors can assist suicides of competent individuals who make an informed decision to end their suffering. In the U. S. states of Oregon and Washington, doctors can write prescriptions for lethal doses but the patient must administer the drugs. Judge Smith found the risks, particularly to those who might be coerced into assisted dying, could be addressed by well- crafted rules that safeguard the vulnerable. In this, she reflected the dissenting opinions of the Supreme Court in 1993 - including those of the former chief justice, Antonio Lamer, and of the current chief justice, Beverley Mc- Lachlin. Very few jurisdictions have adopted assisted suicide laws. And few professional bodies agree that assisted suicide is appropriate or ethical for physicians, who take an oath to preserve life and to do no harm. There is a developing body of opinion, however, that denying a suffering patient the right to terminate her life prolongs suffering and that, ethically, a physician is compelled to relieve that pain through assisting death. This gets at the crux of the argument. Much of the opinion falls in favour of helping to end life for someone who is dying and in pain. Assisted dying, however, goes beyond doctors administering lethal doses of drugs to stop the pain of the terminally ill. Ms. Taylor's position is that the law should permit ending the existential suffering of severe psychological and psychosocial distress - the loss, for example, of dignity of relying totally on others - that comes when one is locked inside the body by an irremediable condition. She argued, successfully, that the law allows her to kill herself but discriminates against her when she is rendered disabled to do so. In 2010, an opinion poll with a three per cent margin of error indicated that 63 per cent of Canadians supported euthanasia. But when the term was qualified - a terminally ill patient, in pain and within months of dying, compared to someone with a life- long but nonthreatening condition ( quadriplegia) - support fell dramatically from 78 to 36 per cent. The evidence from countries that permit assisted dying reveals that no model is fail safe and that the rules are not always followed exactly. Anecdotal evidence indicates Canadian physicians and family members break the law on assisted suicide, technically or otherwise, to help people die. Ms. Taylor has her relief, but the federal government must appeal so all Canadians can know how the law now applies to them. It also should canvass Canadians in public hearings about how the law can balance compassion against protection for the vulnerable. M Y uncle Kenny called me one evening to borrow some aspirin - but not the regular kind. " The blue ones," he said. " The 81- milligram ones." In the last year or two my uncle's health has declined. He's had diabetes, a slight stroke and heart disease. My auntie Jeannie, his wife, had a heart attack a few years ago, and also struggles with heart disease, osteoporosis and arthritis. It's worrisome, since they're both only in their 50s. My uncle Kenny and I talked for a few minutes before I realized he wasn't feeling good. He said he felt dizzy. I told him he should go see a doctor in case he was going to have a heart attack or something. My partner would give him a ride to the hospital. But he didn't want to go to an emergency room so late at night. He said if he started feeling worse he would call an ambulance. I did a little scrambling and was able to get Uncle Kenny a bottle of the aspirins he needed. They cost about $ 6, but they might as well have been $ 100 since my uncle was broke. Imagine that - $ 6 could have cost a trip to the hospital or his life. It's too bad diseases like the ones my uncle and aunt have are so common among aboriginal people - especially when they are often preventable. When you live up north it has a lot to do with lack of access and high cost of healthy foods. When you live in the city it's not as bad, but still difficult to eat healthy foods. The biggest problem is a lack of education about healthy foods and because of it there are growing health woes in many of our communities. Unhealthy food and not enough exercise are making many of us sick. The worst part is we are passing these unhealthy eating habits on to our kids. Unhealthy food is popular in Indian country - just look at the sacred fry bread. That means some of our kids will be getting the same diseases and perhaps dying young. Healthy foods aren't always more expensive than unhealthy ones. People need to learn the tricks to saving money and preparing healthy food. Granted, it's hard to teach your elders how to eat right. Elders need to break decades- old bad habits and follow your advice when you aren't around. Uncle Kenny is dealing with two problems: he can't afford healthy foods, and he can't afford the pills that help keep him healthy, either. Some people think First Nations people with treaty status have amazing medical coverage, but it isn't true. There are many medications and treatments that Indian Affairs doesn't cover - Plavix, for example, which my uncle needs for his heart condition. They said he could file a dispute to get the pills covered, but when you only have a few years of residential school those bureaucratic forms are intimidating. So, what does he do? My uncle just learned he has qualified for disability payments, but between my auntie's stretched work income and their limited medical coverage they always come up short on medication for the month. So he and my aunt share some pills. She has a prescription for pills and she pays for them, but gets a discount thanks to her Pharmacare plan. They try to " save pills" by skipping a few doses here and there to make their medication last until the next payday. Shouldn't good health care be available to every Canadian equally - from new Canadians right down to aboriginal people? I wonder how many other people - First Nations or not - are in the same boat. Colleen Simard is a Winnipeg writer. colleen. simard@ gmail. com B ALTIMORE - On a fine day for nautical gallantry, in the wake of a pre- modern, pre- photography, and predominantly forgotten war - at least down here - 50 youths in white slacks, blue tunics, and black sneakers climbed down from the rigging of a magnificent sailing ship and began singing The Star- Spangled Banner , but not very well. This was excusable - the sailors were Ecuadorians and their stage was the deck of School Ship Guayas, the white- hulled, tall- masted pride of their Amazonian republic's armada, which was racing with the alacrity of a Gal�pagos tortoise toward her berth in Baltimore's famous Inner Harbor, firing her cannon without hitting anything, and flying a flag that nearly was as big as Ecuador itself. Tens of people clapped and saluted as the South American cadets finished crooning, hustled to make fast to the pier and, on the third or fourth try, succeeded. Thus began Sailabration 2012, Baltimore's commemoration of the bicentennial of a conflict so ancient, obscure, and misremembered that the best that even Canadian Geographic Magazine can say about the War of 1812 is that it was " an inconclusive series of battles that laid the foundation for today's Canada." I was up on the bridge of Guayas, translating for the capit�n on a media tour. Cruising all around us were equally splendid Class A tall ships flying the banners of the United States, Indonesia, Brazil, and Mexico, plus another three dozen schooners, frigates, destroyers, patrollers, tenders, barques and sloops. Some of these were replicas and artifacts of the Age of Sail, but others, including several American and British grey hulls, packed enough firepower to reduce the wooden tubs to toothpicks. This was proof that the epoch of maritime violence as national policy still has not ended after 3,000 years, and probably never will. Even tiny Ecuador was liable at any moment to resume hostilities along its jungle border with Per�, though it was hard to see how Guayas would be of much use 300 miles from the ocean. " Qui�n gan� la Guerra de 1812?" I teased our commandant, whose full and operatic name was Amilcar Villavicencio Palacios. " Well," he replied, " the British came, the British went back to Britain, so the winner was the United States." As a summary of two and a half years of fierce and deadly clashes along the Detroit, Niagara, and St. Lawrence Rivers, the burning of York and Washington, the heroism of Laura Secord and the deaths of Tecumseh and Isaac Brock, the humbling of the Royal Navy on Lake Erie, the British bombardment of Baltimore that inspired the American national anthem, the enlistment and betrayal of the Indian nations of the Upper Midwest and Andrew Jackson's rout of the British at the Battle of New Orleans - two weeks after the peace treaty was signed in Belgium - the officer's statement was irreducible and apt. Today, the first, fruitless war of choice and conquest declared by the young republic sleeps far less nobly in American memory than in Canada's. So Baltimore spun Sailabration to mark two centuries of Anglo- American amity, rather than recite the names of battles won and lost. The day after I sailed aboard Guayas, my daughter and I waited in a queue for nearly an hour to tour HMCS Iroquois, the 40- yearold flagship of Canada's East Coast fleet, just to touch her guns and climb her decks and sit in her captain's chair. Then we went aboard a replica of a square topsail Baltimore clipper named Lynx, which was one of hundreds of American fishing and trading vessels that were issued letters of marque in 1812 and given licence as a privateer. At the stern of Lynx was a young Pennsylvanian named Sean Ott, the schooner's first mate, dressed in period costume. " Who won the War of 1812?" I asked him. " Canada," he answered immediately. " To Canadians, the War of 1812 was their ' war of Southern aggression.' " " The War of 1812 was definitely an expansionist war for America," Mr. Ott continued. " A lot of it was based on a war to protect and expand our shipping and our commerce. Plus, a lot of people in the United States thought that Great Britain was occupied with fighting France, so it would be a good idea to take part of Canada." That this failed was due as much to American ineptitude as to the bravery and cohesion of the British Regiments of Foot at Chateauguay and Crysler's Farm, or Brock's suicidal gallantry at Queenston Heights. Yet still, exactly two centuries after the War of 1812 began, it had a lesson to teach. Aboard a tugboat in Baltimore harbour, as I sailed out to join the crew of Guayas, I met a New Yorker named Bill Neubrand. Having served with the U. S. merchant marine, as a claims investigator for Lloyd's of London, and most recently as an executive of a marine insurance firm, Neubrand knew a barge from a battleship. " Who won the War of 1812?" I asked the old salt. ( He was 59.) " Britain," he replied. " I'm slowly coming to that realization. When I was young, we all were taught that the United States had never lost a war. I seriously thought we won in 1812 because we repelled the British. But no no no no no we couldn't have won - we don't have Canada!" ( If you're keeping score, I had asked three people the same question and had gotten three different answers.) Bill Neubrand told me that he was " not a crazy Republican, but still a Republican." " Do you think that America is going to start any more wars of choice?" I asked him. " Nobody's going to stand for it," he replied. " I think the rank and file finally understands that there are limits to American power." " What should Mitt Romney's foreign policy be?" I wondered, looking out at the ships and the sea. " Laissez- faire," the American said. Allen Abel is a Brooklyn- born Canadian journalist based in Washington, D. C. It's hard to be healthy when you're poor COLLEEN SIMARD Tall ships, tall tales, tall orders ALLEN ABEL Must a life be preserved? STEVE HELBER / THE ASSOCIATED PRESS The tall ship Gayas at anchor with other tall ships off Virginia Beach. A_ 1 6_ Jun- 23- 12- FP_ 01. indd A16 6/ 22/ 12 7: 23: 27 PM ;