2 weeks Ago By Special to National Post
Article content Canadian Liberals performed a traditional dance of outrage on X this week, reminiscent of Twitter circa 2015. There was even a hashtag — #WomenAgainstPoilievre — despite the fact X owner Elon Musk told users hashtags had become irrelevant in December. What was the apparent offence that caused legions of Liberals and social media commentators to post things like , “This is unbelievable in this day and age,” “Gilead Pierre wants to regulate ovaries” and “Imagine being a Woman and voting for this garbage.
Ew!” Well, Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre made a completely true statement, of course. In a news conference on Monday, he said , “We will not forget that young 36-year-old couple whose biological clock is running out faster than they can afford to buy a home and have kids.” Male allies played at being similarly appalled, with Ottawa Centre Liberal candidate Yasir Naqvi posting: “Absurd.
Offensive. He’s not even hiding it anymore—this is blatant misogyny. If this is how he sees women, imagine what he thinks about their right to choose.
” Liberal candidate Yvan Baker wrote : “It’s appalling to hear the Conservative leader use such outdated and harmful rhetoric. Using a woman’s fertility as a punchline in a political attack is not only disrespectful – it’s downright misogynistic. Canadians deserve a government that empowers women, supports families, and creates opportunities for young people to achieve their dreams without judgement or shame.
“The times have changed. The Conservative leader clearly hasn’t.” The response was strange and nonsensical.
Poilievre didn’t say anything about women specifically, but even if he had, he would have been right. Women’s fertility declines as they age. And couples that are waiting to become financially stable may wait out their window.
This is simply a reality, despite how inconvenient some might find it. Poilievre was speaking to a very real problem faced by legions of young Canadians, and rather than address those issues, Liberals made the conversation into an imagined war of the sexes. Pretending that biological realities don’t exist is nothing new for progressives.
Since Bill C-16 — which added gender identity and gender expression to the list of prohibited grounds for discrimination — was passed in 2017, the country has for the most part played along with the idea that males can become female through self-declaration. I was one of only a few who spoke out back then, and was blacklisted, vilified, censored, threatened and protested en masse as a result. But even before then, modern feminism taught women that they could “have it all” — a career, motherhood and freedom from the confines of female biology.
Nothing was stopping them! While this is a nice idea, and certainly women deserve the right to choose how they wish to live their lives, there really is a time limit on their ability to reproduce. Far too many women have been promised that they have ample time, only to leave the decision too long and end up being disappointed. It’s not “misogyny” to point out that the cost of living has gotten so high in Canada that couples are postponing having children, sometimes beyond the point of no return.
This is a reality that should be unacceptable to Canadians. Pointing out that female fertility doesn’t last a lifetime does not “regulate” women’s ovaries — it’s women’s bodies themselves that are doing the regulating. These kinds of lies — men can become women, women can “have it all,” biology is just a social construct — don’t help women, they hurt them.
And many of the solutions are equally as bad. Media commentator Sarbjit Kaur wrote in response to Poilievre’s comments: “Do you know what would help women? And families with kids? National daycare program. Guess who brought that to Canada? Not this clock watcher.
” But does shipping infants off to daycare really help women and families? There is plenty of evidence that putting babies, infants and young kids in daycare has detrimental effects . And I’m not convinced that most women actually want it. We don’t like to think of ourselves as animals, driven by evolutionary biology, and yet in so many ways we are.
This isn’t a bad thing. We have developed in rather miraculous ways, thanks to evolution. And despite our best efforts to reject biology and nature, it’s often nature that knows best.
We know we aren’t supposed to take puppies away from their mothers when they’re too young, so why do humans think we are so different? The health and well-being of babies is deeply connected to early bonding with their mothers. Yes, babies and young children who don’t have access to that can still survive and thrive, but it’s not ideal, and it’s not how we were built as humans. Mothers are attuned to their babies’ needs more than anyone.
Mother and baby were quite literally made for one another. I chose not to have kids because it wasn’t what I wanted for my life. There were other things I wanted to do more, and children have frankly never been a desire for me.
I’m very grateful to have had the freedom to make that choice. But for those women who do want kids, is the ideal situation really for them to have to leave them at daycare for someone else to raise so that their family can afford to live comfortably? Life is full of less-than-pleasant choices, but the point in this case is that the epitome of women’s liberation is not that they can become mothers but then can’t afford to be with their children. The perturbed response to Poilievre’s comments is in part an intentional misunderstanding — an attempt to advance the image of him as an offshoot of U.
S. President Donald Trump, who the very same progressives also go to great lengths to paint as an opponent of women’s rights and all that is good and kind in this world. Julie Dzerowicz, another Liberal candidate, wrote on X : “Thank you for your concern, Pierre, but our biological clocks are none of your business.
” Perhaps not, but they are the business of women who wish to have children, and lying to those women about biological realities doesn’t help them. As a woman who was never interested in having kids, talk of “biological clocks” never bothered me all that much. But for the women who do want to have a family and are bothered by Poilievre’s comments, it’s worth asking whether Liberal policies and rhetoric are hurting your ability to make the best choices for you, despite the party’s claim of being an advocate for women.
Canadian progressives have a truth problem — they prefer comforting narratives over reality, and it’s been hurting the country for years. Yes, sometimes the truth hurts — but that doesn’t mean it isn’t worth speaking. National Post Meghan Murphy is a Canadian writer, host of the Same Drugs podcast and People’s Party of Canada candidate in Vancouver East.
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