Justin Trudeau--a bad time to be a pre-born baby

The National Post editorial board--along with some former Liberal MPs--want Justin Trudeau to admit he made a mistake with his thou-shalt-be-pro-choice commandment.

Here is the full letter:

Dear Mr. Trudeau; 

We, the undersigned, former Liberal Members of Parliament, are concerned about your recent pronouncement that people who hold a particular view on a given moral issue, as a matter of conscience, cannot be Liberal candidates for the position of M.P. unless they agree to park their consciences at the entrance to the House of Commons and vote directly opposite to their fundamental beliefs, as directed by you. We believe your undemocratic position will alienate many voters who have, in the past, voted Liberal. We ask that you rescind your decision, for at least the following reasons. 

First, the firm position of all previous Liberal Leaders, including Pierre E. Trudeau, has been that, on moral issues, Liberal Members of Parliament were able to vote according to their respective consciences. This clear and consistent position served the Party well, as witnessed by the number of years the Liberal Party was the Government in the 20th century. For you to fully reverse this wise, long held position of all your predecessors, without any cogent reason, legal or otherwise, has the potential to alienate many former Liberal voters. 

Second, since your edict singles out the issue of being opposed to abortion, but only that issue, it clearly discriminates against a select class of people, namely those who oppose abortion, and no one else, such as those who might oppose, or be in favour of, say, assisted suicide. We believe that such discrimination is a clear violation of the spirit, if not the letter, of The Charter of Rights and Freedoms, section 2 (a) which guarantees everyone, even Liberal Members of Parliament, “freedom of conscience“, and (b), which guarantees everyone, even Liberal Members of Parliament, “freedom of thought, belief, opinion and expression”. 

Third, your pronouncement deprives the members of local Liberal Riding Associations from nominating for election, anyone who is pro-life, and, by logical extension, anyone who has firm personal beliefs on any issue that differs from Party policy as imposed by you. This clearly negates your promise that Liberal nominations will be fair, open and democratic. 

Finally, if your order is not rescinded, it will stand as a precedent for you, and future Liberal Leaders, to issue similar edicts on other moral issues, such as being either for or against assisted suicide, euthanasia, embryonic stem cell research, human cloning, animal/human genetic splicing/mixing and many such issues which we cannot even imagine today, but which may develop as our technological knowledge increases at an ever more rapid pace. After all, if the Leader can ban people from running for the Party because they are opposed to abortion, then why not because they advocate euthanasia, or agree with human cloning, or are opposed to either or both these concepts? Where does one draw the line? 

As Liberal leader, we urge you to return to democratic principles and sensible Party tradition and rescind your ban on people who hold a particular moral belief, from running for the Party, unless they agree to do exactly as demanded by you. How can such a discriminatory policy serve the democratic ideals of our great nation? 

Sincerely,
Garnet Bloomfield
London-Middlesex (1980-1984)
Murray Calder
Dufferin-Peel-Wellington-Grey (1993-2004)
Rex Crawford
Kent (1988-1997)
Pat O’Brien
London-Fanshawe (1993-2006)
John O’Reilly
Haliburton-Kawartha Lakes-Brock (1993-2004)
Janko Peric
Cambridge (1993-2004)
Tom Wappel
Scarborough Southwest (1988-2008)

How does Trudeau respond? With this tweet below.

Trudeau really doesn't get it does he? And worse, he doesn't get that he doesn't get it.

Justin Trudeau, MP        ✔ @JustinTrudeau

Follow

The days when old men get to decide what a woman does with her body are long gone. Times have changed for the better. #LPC defends rights.

4:26 PM - 18 Sep 2014

A letter to Justin - Can we talk?

Dear Justin,

I just read this. I think we need to talk.

You say that:

“I have had a lot of Liberals come up to me and say, 'I don’t quite understand, isn’t the Liberal party about freedom and about defending people’s rights?'"

“Absolutely it is. And the rights that women have fought for over decades to be in control of their own bodies and to control their own reproductive health is not a right I’m going to brush aside to defend the freedom of speech or the freedom to vote a particular way for an MP."

“If they vote in favour of restricting women's access to abortion, that’s taking away their rights. And that is something that we will not accept in the Liberal party. We are the party of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms and that’s a serious, serious position that Liberals have to defend.

"It’s time the Liberal party actually defended rights,”

Now Justin, I'm pretty sure you're a fair to midland, smart kind of guy. And if you are, then I think you also know that there is no Charter right to abortion. Why do you keep saying there is a Charter right to abortion when you surely must know that there isn't?

Now there actually are freedom of speech rights and freedom of conscience rights, which of course morph nicely into "freedom to vote a particular way" rights. Got it? Conscience rights-yes. Abortion rights-no.

And you do know that a child in a mother's womb is not part of her body right? I'm sure you know this from school, it's called the science of Biology, you have heard of it, yes? Please tell me you have. I just couldn't sleep at nights if I thought you'd never heard of Biology before.

So please Justin, tell me please that you'll start getting your Biology and Charter rights--right. Okay? And if you need a bit of remedial help, please have a look here. You'll learn some amazing things.

Glad we had this little talk.

Respectfully yours,
etc. etc.

Educating politicians is a tough job - someone's got to do it

We need to educate New Brunswick politicians on abortion. The two ads below will go along way in doing this.

I hope the politicians also check out the website mentioned in the ad.

Lots of good information to help clear up the myths perpetrated by the pro-abortions like that boring mantra that "abortion is a right" and what the Supreme Court Justices said in the Morgentaler decision and what they did not say.

Come to think of it, abortion diva Joyce Arthur might learn a thing or two as well. Assuming she wants to learn a thing or two about abortion.

Also see New Brunswick Right to Life.

Don't drink while pregnant

LCBO gets it. Why can't the pro-abortions?

Brent Rathberger: How to get kicked out of caucus

If you want to know what it's really like being a back bench MP, read today's National Post.

Former Conservative MP Brent Rathberger has written a book about his experiences working in the Harper Conservatives and his book is excerpted in: From an ex-Tory MP, confessions of a former trained seal.

Rathberger clearly shows how back bench MPs have no power whatsoever; are not actually part of the government; are not responsible for any funding that goes to their constituents; don't have to support the government position when voting; etc. Very enlightening indeed.

A few excerpts:

"In modern Canadian party caucuses, blind loyalty is valued over constructive criticism. Such loyalty is beneficial for promoting caucus solidarity. But it has a decidedly negative effect on an individual MP’s self-esteem, and is ultimately detrimental to both democracy and to good political decision-making. 

... 

Governing-party backbenchers like to think of themselves as part of the government. They are not. Under our constitutional convention of responsible government, the executive is not composed of the legislative caucus of the governing party. The executive is the prime minister and his handpicked ministers of the Crown. Each minister heads, and is responsible for, a department of the permanent government bureaucracy. Since parliamentary secretaries (PSs) answer questions in the House when their minister is absent and are frequently dispatched to the cable political news shows to defend the government, PSs must, by extension, be deemed to be part of the executive/government. However, the rest of the legislative caucus of the governing party (i.e. the backbenchers) isn’t part of the government. As MPs, their role should be to serve their constituents by holding the government to account. In theory, this could involve occasionally voting against the government. 

The government — i.e., the ministers and parliamentary secretaries — are bound by what is known as “two-line whips” (instructions from party leadership) during votes. But backbenchers, at least theoretically, are supposed to be allowed to vote independently on all but “three-line whips” (such as confidence votes). 

The convention of cabinet solidarity requires that a minister (or parliamentary secretary) must always support the government position when voting, or in public, or resign from his or her position. No similar doctrine of caucus solidarity exists — but in recent years, an imposed one has been evolving. 

I am always amused when Conservative backbenchers refer to “our government.” As noted above, that’s inaccurate. However, sitting in the Commons, one frequently hears a member’s statement that begins, “Mr. Speaker, our government’s number-one priority is such and such.” Equally common are planted questions, delivered during Question Period, that begin with the same premise. A question such as, “Can the Minister of Finance comment on our government’s recent positive employment statistics?” is founded on the same false premise: that a backbench MP from the governing party is part of the government.
... 

The idea of being part of a team is stressed at weekly caucus meetings. Every caucus meeting begins and ends with an address by the leader. The opening comments usually are mundane. However, the closing comments, which are akin to a half-time locker-room pep talk, would make a college football coach proud. After summarizing the government’s record, Stephen Harper will close a Wednesday caucus meeting with a Knute Rockne-esque speech full of platitudes such as: “Now let’s go back to our ridings this weekend and remind Canadians that we are the only ones they trust to man- age the economy; and that we are the only party with ideas for the economic growth and crime prevention that Canadians want and deserve.” 

In the Spring of 2013, Chief Government Whip Gordon O’Conner took the team analogy to new and disturbing limits. Langley MP Mark Warawa wished to deliver a statement in the House of Commons, expressing his disappointment that his private member’s motion condemning sex-selective abortion would not be allowed to proceed to a debate. O’Connor justified denying Warawa the opportunity to speak in the House by stating that the caucus was a team and that he was the coach. As coach, he argued, he had the unfettered discretion to determine who gets to “play.” 

The problem is that governing a country is not a game. The stakes are much too high and the outcomes too important to trivialize through sports analogies. 

The sad reality is that government advisors too frequently evaluate any initiative in terms of partisan objectives, rather than policy outcomes. Governing has to be more important than just notional winning; it ought to be about achieving effective outcomes for Canadians. 

The Speaker’s ruling on the Warawa matter confirmed that only the Speaker, not the whip, ultimately gets to determine who is allowed to speak in the House of Commons. Nevertheless, the reality is that backbenchers continue to allow themselves to be ruled by the government. Indeed, there rarely are any occasions when the government needs to worry about restraining its backbench MPs — the members restrain themselves." 

Rathberger's full excerpt is well worth the read. I bet the book is even better. I'd love to know what Stephen Harper thinks of this book.