Our Canadian Political Reality
As I have said in the past two issues of this newsletter, as much as we like to share in the pro-life victories south of the border, we here in Canada must look for our own political solutions. I would now propose several that are unique to us.
1) An Idiosyncratic Supreme Court: The big surprise of the overturning of the Roe v. Wade abortion decision being overturned by the Supreme Court in the U.S. would not be a big deal here. Our Supreme Court routinely reverses itself. Whether on mercy killing, unions right to strike, role of police forces etc., it is becoming common for our court to make a 180 with very little hard legal reasoning. So do not despair just because the Supreme Court has spoken. It does not mean that it will not say something completely different a few years down the road.
2) The Party System is Broken and It isn’t Being Fixed: For most of our history, Parliament has had an array of parties. We need to analyze our system and use the clout that small parties can have in minority parliaments.
3) The Canadian Senate is Fertile Ground for Pro-Lifers: Our Senate is in the midst of flux with less and less party discipline or control. We need to look hard at who our allies can be since they do not need to answer to any political masters.
4) Private Members Bills Still Count: Canada has the highest turnover of parliamentarians in the Western world. We can often see 50% or more changeover in each parliament and think nothing of it. This allows us to critically look at MP’s who are not running again and therefore have less fear of party control over Private Members bills. Even if they don’t pass, they can flush out radical positions on the part of governments or other parties and also flush out interesting allies. As well, they serve to educate the public and to look for cracks that we can exploit. An example is the banning of sex selection abortion.
5) The Big Problems Need to Be Broken Down: As I mentioned in the last paragraph, we may not win on abortion as abortion, but nobody is content with the reality of aborting eight month old pre-born children and the killing of infants by mercy killing is in the same realm. Sometimes issues have to be starved out. When environmental activists couldn’t shut down the oil sands, they took two main routes. First, they shut down the pipelines taking the oil from the oil sands and second, they worked on the financing of the oil companies. With social media being so predominant in our society, we need to look at the funding of all kinds of companies who are promoting and backing Big Abortion and Big Mercy Killing (i.e. Amazon or Disney).
6) Admit There is a 3rd Rail: The third rail is the electric rail that if you touch it, you get electrocuted. Abortion and mercy killing are the political third rails. It is necessary to not only write to Members of Parliament, but to start to add up your voters to make pledges to sway 20, 30, 40 voters in particular polls or ridings that will take mercy killing or abortion as the first issue in their voting choices. Don’t hide it! Claim it!
Canada has its own possibilities for pro-life victories. Let’s take them!
Fr. Tom Lynch (PFLC National President)