Quebecers attend public hearings on euthanasia in Montreal Wednesday. (CBC)

Quebec's public hearings into assisted suicide continued in Montreal Wednesday, with an appearance by the president of the Right to Die With Dignity Association, among others.

Hélène Bolduc told the all-party panel of MNAs leading the hearing that the debate is being sidetracked by calls for better palliative care, more hospital beds and better pain management.

Bolduc said she's surprised by the opposition to euthanasia from doctors working in palliative care.

"We seem like radicals now," Bolduc said of her association, which has 310 members. "I am not a radical."

Bolduc said she finds it hard to be on the opposite side of the debate from palliative care doctors given that those are the professionals currently caring for her terminally ill sister.

"I don't want to be against palliative care," Bolduc said. "But I have to say: there is a limit.

'We seem like radicals now - I am not a radical." —Hélène Bolduc, president of the Quebec Right to Die With Dignity Association

"It's not because I don't believe in this type of care, but palliative care shouldn't be practised with dogged determination."

She likened the palliative care community to the church, with doctors acting as "apostles of redemption."

Bolduc said she's seen palliative care units in which health professionals try to delay an individual's death as long as possible for the sake of the family, who want to see the patient resigned and serene. But they're not serene, Bolduc said; they're simply drugged to ease the pain.

The association wants individuals to have the right to decide when to die, and Bolduc said she hopes Quebec will at the very least stop prosecuting doctors who assist in a terminally ill person's death.

The commission also heard from Sara Raphals, 89, a retired school teacher and cancer survivor.

Raphals told the panel that there is little dignity in the way the elderly are treated and that suicide should be a basic human right.

"I know many people [in institutions] who are absolutely miserable," Raphals said.

"For the few of my peers who are still left, the first greeting is, 'I hope I go to sleep tonight and don't wake up in the morning'."

Raphals said she hoped Quebec will consider legalizing assisted-suicide, but she doesn't believe someone other than the ailing individual should dictate the terms of that person's death.

The public hearing, dubbed Dying With Dignity, will visit 11 communities across the province this fall to hear what individuals and groups think about assisted suicide.