Trudeau really means sameness when he speaks of diversity

July 22, 2017

By former MP Ken Epp

I woke up very early this morning, and started thinking about a bunch of different things. Of course, I was thinking of the “Unity” vote today, ...and the history that led us to this place. The media has been abuzz regarding the “bad” influence that the “so-cons” have. That led me to this thought: The “diversity” cool-aid that Justin Trudeau and his colleagues, the leftist politicians and media want us to drink is the largest concoction of hypocrisy that could be invented. Trudeau’s favorite phrase is, “We are not strong in spite of our diversity; we are strong because of our diversity.” This is hogwash. Trudeau doesn’t believe this, nor do all the others espousing this idea. It is clear to me that it is not diversity they are seeking – it is SAMENESS! They want us all to be like them. They want us all to accept, unquestioningly, their wrong-headed, anything-goes life philosophy and belief that they espouse. Any dissenting thought is roundly castigated and punished. That is NOT diversity!

Here are two obvious examples:

In the last election campaign, Trudeau declared that no-one that disagreed with his view on abortion would be permitted to run as a candidate for the Liberal Party. Hey! Some people think it is okay to “terminate a pregnancy” (such polite, impersonal terminology.) Others believe, as I do, that it is the termination of the life of a living human being. There is overwhelming scientific and other evidence for this point of view. But is this diversity in belief tolerated and encouraged? No. Everybody in Canada is forced to believe exactly as they do, even being compelled on threat of jail time, to fund this deliberate killing with our tax dollars. No diversity here! They are calling for universal conformity.

The next example is in the belief regarding marriage. There are some who believe that you can “love” and hence be married to a person of the same gender, more than one person at a time, or some other combination. Others, including me, have a deeply held belief that marriage can only be the “Union of one man and one woman to the exclusion of all others.” It is a holy union, founded in antiquity, and upheld through the ages until recently. Am I permitted to have this now diverse opinion? No! I am being forced to comply with their beliefs. If I fail to do so, I am the object of much derision, name-calling, and even punishment. If I express my beliefs, a firmly held conviction based on history and my belief in the Scriptures, I am ridiculed out of the debate, drawn into a human rights tribunal, fined, and/or imprisoned. I am labeled a “bigot” and a “homophobe.” Where does that come from? By the way, “homophobia” is a misnomer. “Homo” means “same.” A “phobia” is an irrational fear. Neither apply. Who is the same as me? A heterosexual human male. I do not fear such a person. And if you use the new definition which really is “homosexual” I don’t fear them either. I don’t have either a rational or irrational fear of them. (If I did, why did I actively try to befriend two of my parliamentary colleagues who were self-declared homosexuals?) Where is the diversity? I thought that this diversity was to give us strength. (LOL)

So, friends, I think we should wake up and recognize the “diversity maxim” for what it is. It’s a huge diversion from freedom of speech and thought, freedom of religious belief, and freedom from harassment. It does not have as its goal to unite us, but rather to divide us.

Rick Warren sums it up perfectly in his statement: “Our culture has accepted two huge lies. The first is that if you disagree with someone’s lifestyle, you must fear or hate them. The second is that to love someone means you agree with everything they believe or do. Both are nonsense. You don’t have to compromise convictions to be compassionate.”

Oh how I wish that we could have political leaders who would forget about trying to appease the “other side.” Instead, what we need are leaders who will champion our right to respectful dissenting thought and expression. We are confusing “tolerance” with “celebration.” I tolerate and love my friend who is a hopeless alcoholic, but I feel no compulsion to celebrate his lifestyle. I have many friends who do not attend the church I attend, but they totally tolerate me. It is not necessary to celebrate with me to live in harmony with me. Similarly, I should have the right, respectfully to not march in a homosexual parade. Why should I be forced to celebrate that in which I do not believe? Similarly, there should be total freedom of choice in the matter of our political leaders as to whether they march in a “Gay parade.” Some will; some won’t. Why should we shower them with hateful epithets if they choose not to?

Diversity. As currently presented, it’s a harmful myth.

The anti-choice pro-abortions

Jeff Durham (of Molly Matters) wonders why Joyce Arthur et all don't like Bill C-484, Unborn Victms of Crime. (Jeff tragically lost his wife and unborn child in one go to murder.)

In fact Durham wonders if ARCC is really anti-choice:

How can any reasonable person who claims to advocate for the choice of a woman call a law that would make it so that the choice was only hers “anti-choice”? 

What is your true agenda? How can you put forth no effort to defend the choice of one woman when it is violated? Or the choice of all of the women who were murdered when they were carrying a child? 

How can you conscionably tell people that to protect what a woman has chosen would take away their right to make a choice? 

If it is not the choice of women that you defend, who’s choice exactly is it? 

Are you even conscious of your contradiction? 

Canada is waking up to your double talk. 

Molly was Cassie’s choice and Molly matters."

Calling the pro-abortions anti-choice makes complete sense. Because the only choice they ever advocate for is the choice to dismember, decapitate and disembowel pre-born babies. The pro-abortions almost never advocate for adoption or, for women to keep their baby heaven forbid.

I also got a good chuckle out of Fake Person's indignant tweets to Jeff Durham about his blog post which she clearly didn't like--she tweeted him at least five times with the very same link to some bill the pro-abortions would support. As if Durham was an imbecile and one tweet wasn't enough.

When Ken Epp first introduced his Unborn Victims of Crime Bill Joyce Arthur wrote a lot of nonsensical stuff on the bill. Ken Epp provided some excellent rebuttals to Arthur. It's funny how often pro-life people have to always spend time correcting Arthur. Well it's not really funny, but you know what I mean.

Federal Conservatives don't support all conservatives

Rex Murphy talked about 2013 and how Prime Minister Stephen Harper reacted to the senate scandal:

"As always in a crisis, Mr. Harper drew up the drawbridge and retreated to the fortress, i.e., his political base. There is a genuine hardcore of Conservative followers who will stay with the party however dark the clouds; and when in difficulty, Mr. Harper tends to them and them only. (The Liberals and NDP both can claim a similar core of diehards.) But in Mr. Harper’s case, the power of the Senate scandal was such as to detach even some from this otherwise unshakeable support group."

Here is my response to this in a letter in today's National Post:

I used to be a ‘hard-core conservative’

Re: For Harper’s Conservatives, 2013 Was All About The Senate Scandal, Rex Murphy, Dec. 27.

Rex Murphy talks about “genuine hard-core of Conservative followers.” That was me — up to the point when Stephen Harper made the decision to become pro-choice.

I had a glimmer of hope back in November when the Conservatives had their policy convention and finally condemned sex-selection abortion. Yet afterwards, we saw no real action on this practice. It also appeared to be a somewhat disingenuous move, since it didn’t jibe with MP Mark Warawa’s own motion on the same subject. [This motion was deemed non-votable because it was supposedly outside of federal jurisdiction. So how could it be legitimate for a federal party to condemn the practice, but outside of Parliament's jurisdiction to condemn the practice?]

As well, the Conservatives also supported the Unborn Victims of Crime policy resolution at the 2008 Conservative policy convention. Yet, five years later, that support still has not translated into any kind of policy, bill, or motion.

I will have to see some pretty hard-core changes in the leadership of the Conservative party before the next election in order to vote Conservative again. As it stands now, if the government continues to support the status quo on abortion (i.e., a pro-abortion position) and/or Mr. Harper remains leader, I could not in good conscience vote Conservative. And I’m pretty sure I won’t be the only hard-core Conservative who chooses to move away from the Conservatives.

Patricia Maloney, Ottawa.

A refresher course for pro-abortions

There are so many things wrong with what Joyce Arthur says in her article attacking Stephen Woodworth’s motion, but I’ll focus here on just a few points where she plays fast and loose with the facts.

1. Ms. Arthur says:

“The Supreme Court has already decided the issue.”

Wrong. The Supreme Court has repeatedly and consistently left it up to Parliament to decide this issue. Did Arthur not read Ken Epp’s response to her in 2008 when she made similar misleading comments about Bill C-484 (Unborn Victims of Crime Act), or has she simply forgotten?

For your convenience, Ms. Arthur, I provide a link to Mr. Epp’s report, The truth about Bill C-484: A compassionate and constitutionally valid remedy to current injustice in Canadian criminal law.

On page 20 Mr. Epp says:

“The courts have said that the fetus is not a “person” in Canadian law, and this is because our existing law does not recognize the fetus as a person. So the Courts have simply acknowledged the law as it stands today. But the Supreme Court has also said on numerous occasions that Parliament has a legitimate interest in the protection of the fetus and that it is not up to the courts to decide how to provide this protection – in spite of the fetus not being a “person” according to existing law – it is up to the legislature, that is, Parliament, to decide. Contrary to Ms. Arthurs claim that C-484 “flies in the face of several Supreme Court of Canada rulings,” C-484, in fact, is reinforced by Supreme Court of Canada rulings, including the very three cases Ms. Arthur cites, namely, Dobson v. Dobson, Tremblay v. Daigle, and Winnipeg and Child Family Services v. D.F.G.”

Mr. Epp then goes on to describe in detail these three cases and how the SCC clearly stated how it is within Parliament’s jurisdiction to protect preborn children in law.

2. Ms. Arthur says:

“Giving personhood to fetuses invites criminal prosecution of pregnant women for negative outcomes”
and then goes on to condemn C-484 and says:
“At the time, the U.S.-based group National Advocates for Pregnant Women prepared a 15-page brief for ARCC-CDAC, documenting the hundreds of unjust cases of prosecutions of pregnant women in the U.S.”

She conveniently omitted to tell the reader that Ken Epp also refuted those NAPW claims in his other report called, Claims that US “fetal homicide / “unborn victims of violence” laws target pregnant women: A Smoke-screen to attempt to discredit Bill C-484.

3. Ms. Arthur says in point 6:

“abortions after 20 weeks are rare in Canada – virtually all are confined to cases of fetal abnormality where the fetus cannot survive after birth.”

I’ve already challenged Ms. Arthur to provide evidence of how many late-term abortions occur every year and the reason for each one in The great pro-abortion urban legend.

I’m still waiting for that evidence. You’d think that if she wanted people to believe her, she would provide some evidence to back up her claims.

All we do know, is that the number of late abortions is somewhere between 552 and 70,621 (that's 552 known late term abortions, plus 70,069 unknown gestational age abortions) and we have seen no published data on the reasons for these abortions.

4. Ms. Arthur says:

“Woodworth also continually uses the word ‘child’ to describe a fetus, which is just another ‘begging the question’ ploy to try and lead people to equate fetuses with children and therefore accept that they should have rights. ...Although ‘child’ is often used informally to refer to fetuses, this is a colloquial usage that has no legitimate place in modern law or medicine – including in Woodworth’s motion.”

Wrong again, Joyce. Let me repeat how Ken Epp already responded to you on this point on pages 16-17 of The truth about Bill C-484: A compassionate and constitutionally valid remedy to current injustice in Canadian criminal law:

“ The Criminal Code currently uses no term other than “child” to refer to the unborn child (Sections 223 (1) , 223 (2), 238 (1) and 238 (2)). The term “fetus” is never used in the Criminal Code.

....the existing section 238 refers to the “child that has not become a human being”; section 223 states that the “child becomes a human being within the meaning of this Act when it has completely proceeded, in a living state, from the body of its mother”;

....Ms. Arthur is also incorrect in her understanding of section 223 (2). She says, “The meaning of child in subsection (2) is the same as that in the definition – a born-alive human being.” The exact wording of this section is: “223 (2) A person commits homicide when he causes injury to a child before or during its birth as a result of which the child dies after becoming a human being.” In section 223 (2), the term “child” is used to refer to both the unborn child and the born child.

..... Given that the term “child” is already used in the Criminal Code to refer to the fetus/unborn child/human offspring before birth, one is left to wonder why Ms. Arthur displays such an adverse, extreme, reaction to the use of this term in C-484. It is worth noting that what Ms. Arthur refers to as “anti-abortion activist” language was actually used by none other than staunch pro-choice advocate and former Cabinet Minister Barbara McDougall twenty years ago in the House of Commons:

'Society and religion, over the centuries, have had differing views on the mores of abortion, of killing an unborn child. Let us not be afraid of the vocabulary. [emphasis added] (Hon. Barbara McDougall, Hansard, P. 1 8080, July 27, 1988)'”.

As Joe Friday used to say on the TV series from the 1950's, Dragnet:

"All we want are the facts, ma'am".

Crippling free speech on campus and in Parliament

(An edited version of this article appeared in the March/April 2011 issue of LifeCanada News)

There is a disturbing parallel between what is happening to university pro-life clubs, and politicians’ refusal to debate abortion in Parliament. In both cases, those in authority are censoring freedom of speech and freedom of expression as it relates to abortion.

In an interview with CBC's Peter Mansbridge in January, Stephen Harper was asked if his government received a majority in the next election, whether he would "reopen the abortion issue". Mr. Harper responded:
"No, no, no. Look Peter, I've spent my political career trying to stay out of that issue. It's one on which people, including in my own party have passionate views, they're all over the map, and you know what I say to people...as you know, many people I know are pro-life...what I say to people, is if you want to diminish the number of abortions you've got to change hearts and not laws, and I'm not interested in having a debate over abortion law."

But Mr. Harper doesn't seem to get it. Changing laws, and the necessary debate that the legislative process involves, is actually a very powerful mechanism for changing hearts, as one of Canada's most vocal abortion proponents herself admitted.

A few years ago MP Ken Epp introduced a bill C-484 in Parliament, the Unborn Victims of Crime Act (1). The bill created heated discussion in the media, both from the pro-life side and from the pro-choice side. Many so-called "pro-choicers" argued vigorously against the bill, most notably, Joyce Arthur, head of the Abortion Rights Coalition of Canada.

Arthur let slip her real motivation behind her opposition to Bill C-484 when she said:
"If the fetuses are recognized in this bill, it could bleed into people's consciousness and make people change their minds about abortion".(2)

Arthur was worried about what effect legal recognition of the value of the fetus would have on the public's perception of abortion, even though Bill C-484 did not in any way criminalize consensual abortion. The bill only offered protection to the pre-born child in one very narrow circumstance (i.e., when the pregnant mother is the victim of a crime and her baby is intentionally harmed as well).

But Arthur was afraid such a law would do exactly what Mr. Harper said, and hearts would be changed against abortion.

Even if a law on the subject matter of abortion does not in fact pass, the discussion and debate it generates is a crucial means to changing hearts. It is difficult to fathom the Prime Minister not recognizing this connection.

Now let’s look at what is happening to pro-life groups on university campuses, and the latest pro-life group casualty, Carleton’s Lifeline. This is just one more campus pro-life group, in a long line of many, which is being silenced across our country.

Last fall these pro-life students were charged with two counts of trespassing each: one count of engaging in prohibited activity and one count of failing to leave the premises when asked.

Why were they charged? Because they planned to display the Genocide Awareness Project (the GAP exhibit compares abortion to historically recognized forms of genocide) at Tory Quad, a large outdoor area on campus with high traffic.

Lifeline is now suing the University (3). Lawyer Albertos Polizogopoulos says about the lawsuit:
"If universities begin to censor students on the basis of their political belief, universities will become centres of indoctrination as opposed to centres of learning. Freedom of expression on a university campus is essential to its integrity.”

So why did CUSA want to prevent Lifeline from showing the GAP project?

It's the truth behind those pictures. Graphically showing abortion destroys the euphemistic label "pro-choice". A picture really is worth a thousand words: "Pro-choice"=bloody killed fetus. There really is no nice way to say this. If University students see these pictures, they see the truth--the result of abortion. They do not see "pro-choice".

If CUSA allows Lifeline to show these graphic depictions of abortion, young impressionable university students might turn against abortion. They might have a change of heart.

CUSA and other anti-prolife student unions are learning from our political leaders that censorship and quashing of debate on abortion is acceptable. This disturbing ripple effect encourages students to discriminate against pro-life students because some people have decided they don't like the message.

We reap (in our universities) what we sow (in our Parliament).

Canadians must become engaged in the political process at all levels. Because censoring debate, whether in Parliament or on university campuses--is not freedom of speech. And it is not democracy.

(1) This bill would have created a separate offense for intentionally harming or killing an unborn child during the commission of an offense against the child's mother. The bill passed at Second Reading in the spring of 2008, but it died before it could get to the Third Reading vote because an election was called in the fall of 2008.
2) "Fetal rights stir debate on abortion," by Charles Lewis, National Post, March 1, 2008
3) Statement of claim http://carletonlifeline.files.wordpress.com/2011/02/statement-of-claim.pdf