Nobody is doing more to get Erin O’Toole elected that Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, and nobody is more effectively driving disillusioned voters who were considering the People’s Party of Canada back into the Conservative Party tent.
I’ve had messages from quite a few people who were not planning to vote Conservative this time around who have changed their minds, and their decision rarely has anything to do with the Conservative leader’s performance. It has everything to do with Trudeau’s determination to thoroughly demonize Canadians purely for political gain.
In fact, Trudeau’s wedge issue—implementing mandatory vaccination for domestic travel without any exemptions or options for rapid testing—looks to have helped O’Toole rather than Trudeau. Trudeau’s cynical speeches, where he shouts about the unvaccinated (“those people”) and accuses them of being a danger to Canadian children everywhere, are simply gross. Politics always has an element of us versus them; Trudeau is making it too obvious—and dangerous—for many.
Trudeau’s own hubris and hypocrisy on the issue aren’t helping. Not all of the Liberal candidates are vaccinated, but Trudeau isn’t demanding that they shout “unclean! Unclean!” as they stump door to door. Trudeau was happy to pack a room in Toronto to over-capacity and break the law—and then dodge questions about it when asked, because he is Justin Trudeau, and the same rules don’t apply to him. Rules are for little people like us.
Speaking of little people, Trudeau’s recently revealed platform (delayed because he wanted to rip off other party ideas) also gives so-cons like myself another reason to consider the Conservative Party. Trudeau is going far beyond his regular promises to fund abortion overseas and fight for further abortion access in Canada—he’s now promising that if re-elected, he will specifically target pro-life organizations that help women seek alternatives to abortion. From the Liberal platform:
A re-elected Liberal government will:
No longer provide charity status to anti-abortion organizations (for example, Crisis Pregnancy Centres) that provide dishonest counseling to women about their rights and about the options available to them at all stages of pregnancy.
In other words, the Liberals will target any centre that doesn’t explicitly offer abortion as a choice, despite, as I wrote earlier this summer for Convivium, the fact that even Canadian abortion rights groups admit that a huge number of Canadian women are having abortions they do not want. That doesn’t matter to Trudeau and his Liberals, which believe in unwanted babies but never unwanted abortions.
I also wonder what this precedent might say about churches and other organizations with special tax status who are also pro-life. Is the Liberals’ next move to say that no organization or religious body declining to endorse their view of abortion and LGBT issues should be denied charitable or tax exempt-status? I know that is what many progressive activists have wanted for a very long time. This policy would be a big step in that direction. Trudeau tried it with the Canada Summer Jobs Program. This could be the next step.
Further to that, the prime minister has also promised to: “Establish regulations under the Canada Health Act governing accessibility for sexual and reproductive health services so there is no question, that no matter where someone lives, that they have access to publicly available sexual and reproductive health services. Failure on the part of a province to meet this standard would result in an automatic penalty applied against federal health transfers.”
In the middle of a pandemic in which we are constantly warned about the creaking and groaning of the over-taxed healthcare system, Justin Trudeau is threatening to withhold health funds from any province that does not make abortion as available as he thinks appropriate. I suspect that he consulted abortion rights groups for this little laundry list, and that it will be abortion groups making the call on what constitutes appropriate accessibility. Those pro-lifers who thought things couldn’t get worse in a country with no restrictions on abortion have been proven wrong once again: Under Justin Trudeau, they can always get worse.
Many voters are returning to the Conservative Party right now for the same reason that many left-wing voters eventually end up with the Liberals over the NDP: They want to throw out the prime minister. Justin Trudeau is transforming Canada, and he is only getting more aggressive in his attacks on social conservatives and anyone else who does not live or think the way he believes they should. He is traveling the country, demonizing Canadians who believe that life in the womb should be protected and claiming that even those with medical exemptions should have no right to travel without getting vaccinated.
Trudeau has to go. Canada cannot take four more years of this man.
Trudeau is pretty desperate, it looks like we’re getting close to the “soldiers with guns in our cities” phase of the campaign. I previously thought the 2021 election would be about rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic, but Trudeau’s raised the stakes considerably.
As an aside I find it interesting that the abortion lobby has utterly failed to rally people (other than hardcore abortion enthusiasts) against crisis pregnancy centres, despite heavily campaigning against them. Even in relatively abortion-friendly areas, this and that John Oliver segment from a few years back are about all you’ve gotten from mainstream figures lately. The most serious accusations against crisis pregnancy centres are that they stretch the truth on the health risks of abortion. That, and what CPCs actually do (present women with free baby supplies, support, and decent alternatives to abortion), evidently isn’t something that keeps normal people up at night.
While I agree that Trudeau’s plan for vaccination mandates makes his path to victory less certain I’d be surprised if his targeting of Crisis Pregnancy Centres will have much impact. I say this because many pregnancy centres in Canada already “explicitly offer abortion as a choice”. Over the past few years I have found it alarming to hear of Centres offering abortion as an equal counselling option to parenting and adoption. It is perplexing to me to see how an organization can, from a Christian ethic, help women in a crisis seek alternatives to abortion when one of the alternatives on the table is abortion. Given this situation I wonder how many would actually be at risk of losing their charity status.
Absolutely appalling. The only hope for Canada is repenting of the horror of abortion and turning back to protecting our unborn babies.
Trudeau is pretty desperate, it looks like we’re getting close to the “soldiers with guns in our cities” phase of the campaign. I previously thought the 2021 election would be about rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic, but Trudeau’s raised the stakes considerably.
As an aside I find it interesting that the abortion lobby has utterly failed to rally people (other than hardcore abortion enthusiasts) against crisis pregnancy centres, despite heavily campaigning against them. Even in relatively abortion-friendly areas, this and that John Oliver segment from a few years back are about all you’ve gotten from mainstream figures lately. The most serious accusations against crisis pregnancy centres are that they stretch the truth on the health risks of abortion. That, and what CPCs actually do (present women with free baby supplies, support, and decent alternatives to abortion), evidently isn’t something that keeps normal people up at night.
While I agree that Trudeau’s plan for vaccination mandates makes his path to victory less certain I’d be surprised if his targeting of Crisis Pregnancy Centres will have much impact. I say this because many pregnancy centres in Canada already “explicitly offer abortion as a choice”. Over the past few years I have found it alarming to hear of Centres offering abortion as an equal counselling option to parenting and adoption. It is perplexing to me to see how an organization can, from a Christian ethic, help women in a crisis seek alternatives to abortion when one of the alternatives on the table is abortion. Given this situation I wonder how many would actually be at risk of losing their charity status.