1 week Ago By [email protected] (Althia Raj)
Half way through this federal election campaign and one word has yet to be uttered: abortion. Maybe it’s because U.S.
President Donald Trump continues to threaten our economy. Maybe it’s because Liberal Leader Mark Carney appears to be heading toward a win. Maybe it’s because Pierre Poilievre declared himself to be pro-choice.
But so far the Conservative leader has escaped the pesky question his predecessors grappled with: how would he safeguard a women’s right to choose? That question plagued former Conservative leaders Andrew Scheer, an anti-abortion Catholic, and Erin O’Toole, a pro-choice candidate — especially as they campaigned in Quebec. The party’s major challenge when it comes to abortion is not what their leaders’ personal views are but rather how that person will ensure the views of some of their MPs don’t become law. While the party’s policy book states “a Conservative government will not support any legislation to regulate abortion,” it also states that “on issues of moral conscience, such as abortion, the definition of marriage, and euthanasia, the Conservative party acknowledges the diversity of deeply-held personal convictions among individual party members and the right of Members of Parliament to adopt positions in consultation with their constituents and to vote freely.
” With enough anti-abortion MPs and a Conservative majority government, a leader’s promise not to reopen the issue moves from a theoretical question to one that could legitimately affect a woman’s right to, and access to, an abortion. A Conservative leader’s pledge not to pass anti-abortion legislation could easily rest on the support of MPs from the Liberals, Bloc Québécois and NDP. Campaign Life Coalition lists 55 Conservative candidates — 36 incumbents — as having obtained the anti-abortion group’s seal of approval.
Its director of political operation, Jack Fonseca, expects “more will be added,” as some candidates, such as St. Catharines’ Bas Sluijmers, have yet to be sent the group’s survey. Sluijmers, was an intern with the Canadian Centre for Bio-ethical Reform (CCBR), a year before Toronto city councillors criticized the group for sending bloodied photos of aborted fetuses to people’s homes, and taking out billboards showing the graphic images.
In an interview with the CCBR in 2016, Sluijmers described his interest in joining the pro-life movement as one driven by realizing the “massive present injustice in Canada and around the world that is abortion.” He recounted that his best experience in the pro-life movement was a trip he took to Florida with the group to take part in its “Genocide Awareness Project” — promoting massive billboards that “graphically compare the victims of abortion to victims of other atrocities, such as the Jews in the Holocaust.” He refers to the event as cementing his beliefs.
Sluijmers did not respond to requests from the Star for comment. The Conservative party is still the only party that welcomes candidates with anti-abortion views. But that welcome is increasingly a little cold.
Fonseca blames the “red Tory swamp in Poilievre’s office” for appointing nearly half of all new candidates, thereby limiting the group’s ability to influence nomination contests and reach out to the candidates themselves to inquire about their pro-life views. “Poilievre has taken a page out of (former Liberal leader Justin) Trudeau’s book and trash democracy, trash party democracy, trash nominations, and just appointed who he wanted, in about 100 ridings.” When three-term MP Arnold Viersen told Liberal MP Nathaniel Erskine-Smith last year that he wants protections for what he called “pre-born” and would “vote gay marriage down,” if a hypothetical bill on same-sex marriage came to the floor of the House of Commons, Poilievre said he would make sure that as prime minister no laws would be passed that restrict a woman’s reproductive choices.
But what would he specifically do? Would he defy long-standing Conservative policy and muzzle his MPs? Recently, Poilievre told a Quebec podcaster that he would “never change the law on abortion.” (Though Canada has no law on abortion.) Later adding: “We will never change the rules or the law to restrain the right to an abortion.
Women will have the right to make their own choices on this.” But under his leadership, a Conservative MP did try to reopen the abortion question. Saskatchewan MP Cathay Wagantall introduced a bill in January 2023, that sought to amend the Criminal Code so that the act of knowingly assaulting a pregnant woman and causing her physical or emotional harm could be factored in as aggravating circumstances during the sentencing process.
Wagantall is a staunch pro-lifer. The NDP and the Liberals said they viewed it as a “veiled attempt” at limiting abortion rights. Bloc MP Andréanne Larouche told the House of Commons Wagantall’s bill was “truly a threat and could lead to a major setback for women’s rights.
” Yet every Conservative MP voted for it — 113 MPs, including Poilievre. The bill was only defeated by the other parties uniting in opposition. Perhaps we should judge by action rather than words.
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