By Sheila Copps
First published in The Hill Times on June 19, 2023.

OTTAWA—A Conservative private member’s attempt to revive the abortion debate by conferring unique legal status on pregnant women was clobbered in the House last week.

The governing Liberals united with New Democrats and the Bloc Québécois to defeat Bill C-311 by almost a two-to-one margin.

Opponents of the bill introduced by Saskatchewan Conservative MP Cathay Wagantall numbered 205. Supporters mustered only 113 votes.

Under most circumstances, that should be the end of the story. But with the Conservatives leading in national public opinion polls, and their strong support for the bill, it will only be a matter of time before the question of the legal status of fetuses ends up being litigated when a future Wagantall bill is passed.

Witness the debate concerning the Violence Against Pregnant Women Act in Parliament to understand why this legislation could represent a threat to legal abortions in the country.

The United States is already experiencing a wave of anti-women and anti-gay legislation as a result of a Supreme Court ruling that put legal abortions at risk in parts of their country.

Canadian pundits said this could not happen here, but another item in the news last week paints a different picture.

Alberta Premier Danielle Smith named her cabinet, including a health minister with a strong bias against legal abortions. Adriana LaGrange served as education minister in the United Conservative Party government of former premier Jason Kenney. In that role, she presided over one of the largest public sector cuts in Alberta history, firing 20,000 educational assistants, substitute teachers, bus drivers and maintenance staff.

With LaGrange at the helm and Smith’s well-documented ruminations on private medicine, it likely won’t be too long before the new government moves to start charging for more health services.

Even more concerning is the minister’s opposition to legal abortion in the province. Her maiden speech in the Alberta legislature four years ago was entitled, “The lord leads me where he needs me.”

While she was a school trustee, LaGrange served on the provincial board of Alberta Pro-Life. In her first provincial election, she was backed by RightNow, an activist anti-abortion organization.

As education minister, LaGrange introduced a controversial piece of legislation requiring parental notification when any student joined a gay-straight alliance club. The original protection from parental notification was designed to protect those students who could face danger if their parents became aware of their sexual orientation. Students were also denied the right to use the word ‘gay’ or ‘queer’ in describing after-school clubs, and administrators were permitted to keep their inclusivity policies secret.

If LaGrange was controversial in education, there is no reason to think she won’t repeat that history in health. Those who think that access to abortion is safe across the country need to face facts.

Wagantall in Saskatchewan and LaGrange in Alberta are only the tip of the iceberg. When the bill on pregnant women was introduced, the Conservative party was pretty much unanimous in support, starting with the leader.

Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre has said that he will not introduce legislation on abortion, but he has also stated that other members of his caucus are free to do so.

He is the only leader ambivalent about his support for the LGBTQ2S+ communities, refusing to attend Pride parades or showing visible support for those struggling with a wave of homophobia across the country.

With a raucous parliamentary session coming to close, Poilievre’s popularity continues to outstrip that of the governing Liberals.

Abacus Data released a poll last week in which 35 per cent of the respondents said they would vote Tory if an election were held today. That number had increased three percentage points since the previous month, while the Liberals were down two points at 28 per cent.

The appetite for electoral change is there and the Conservatives are the beneficiaries. Approximately 80 per cent of those polled said it is time for a change in government.

Polls move, and most would agree that both Poilievre and Prime Minister Justin Trudeau are stellar campaigners. The fight may come right down to the wire in a tight election in 2025 (or whenever it happens).

If there is a Conservative majority win, do not be surprised if limitations on women’s reproductive rights and rights for those in the gay community resurface.

Premier Smith did not hide her intention to move toward health privatization.

Her party has many abortion opponents sitting in the legislature. A key one is now occupying the health minister’s chair.

Sheila Copps is a former Jean Chrétien-era cabinet minister and a former deputy prime minister. Follow her on Twitter at @Sheila_Copps.

If Erin O’Toole really wants to appeal to non-traditional Conservatives, he will have to cut ties with social conservatives and the far right.

By Sheila Copps
First published in The Hill Times on August 31, 2020.

OTTAWA—It would be a mistake to underestimate the electability of Erin O’Toole.

He has many things going for him, the first of which is that he is a relative unknown. These days, the shelf-life of a politician is generally one election. It used to be that if you were doing a decent job, voters might keep you around for a second term.

The longevity of a local politician is still in the double digits. Just ask Ottawa mayor Jim Watson how many ministers on the federal and provincial level that he has outlived. But party politics is one place where the more experience you get, the more people want to get rid of you.

Just look at how many people rabidly despised Hillary Clinton, even though she had more experience than any other candidate at the national and international level. She wore her husband’s warts, and then some.

Clinton was also suffering from the same swathe of sexism that came to the fore when Chrystia Freeland was recently named finance minister. Multiple journalists attacked Freeland’s lack of financial credentials. These same journalists never questioned the bona fides of lawyers cum finance ministers, like Jim Flaherty and Ralph Goodale. Freeland, like ministerial colleague Catherine McKenna, was dished up a particularly vitriolic dose of misogyny.

O’Toole has a chance to shape his brand, and in his early morning victory speech last week, he hit all the right buttons. He spoke at length about how to broaden the party base and invite those who have never voted Conservative to join him. He outlined his support of the LGBTQ community and his opposition to reopening the abortion question.

But O’Toole will also have to stickhandle the demands within his own party, as the radical right gained strength and visibility during the Conservative leadership race.

Tory pundits were lauding the fact that a Black woman surpassed Peter MacKay’s support in all western provinces. They claimed that the support for Leslyn Lewis was testament to Tories’ openness to diversity.

Hogwash. Lewis was a stalking horse for the anti-choice movement, which continues to grow deep and strong roots in the Conservative party.

The fact that a candidate for leadership, who could not speak French, would get 20 per cent of the party’s vote on a first ballot is truly frightening. When you couple her party support with that of Derek Sloan, the pair of proudly evangelical politicians garnered 40 per cent of the Conservative Party’s 174,404 voters. That is scary.

Lewis is now being touted as a new leading light in her party. That blows up O’Toole’s shout-out to inclusivity on election night. Her leadership transcendence was driven by those who would like to turn back the clock on issues like abortion.

Sloan had a 12-point plan on the issue. His first commitment was to promise to work with party grassroots to revoke Conservative Party policy No. 70. That policy, slimly endorsed at their 2018 Halifax policy convention, states that “a Conservative government will not support any legislation to regulate abortion.”

Lewis was ranked No. 1 on the voter’s list recommended by the anti-choice group RightNow. Sloan was ranked second. O’Toole was ranked third, and MacKay came dead last.

RightNow describes itself as the political arm of the pro-life movement and promotes a mandate to work full-time to secure nominations and elections for candidates who oppose abortion. No surprise that Lewis was their chosen candidate.

Like Sloan, she does not support abortion and is opposed to a government ban on conversion therapy, a controversial practice to modify the sexual orientation of gays and lesbians.

MacKay, who ran behind Lewis in all western provinces on the first ballot, was directly attacked by her for claiming that social conservatism was like a “stinking albatross” around the neck of party in the last election.

At some point during the race, one-third of Tory voters cast a ballot for Lewis.

Lewis, who has four degrees including a master’s in environmental science, opposes the carbon tax. She also received support during the race from the gun lobby. She and Sloan both oppose Canada’s current immigration policy and Lewis promised to roll back legalization of marijuana.

If O’Toole elevates her to a senior party position, he will be playing right into the hands of RightNow, whose stated intention is to re-criminalize abortion.

During his victory speech, O’Toole promised to reach out to a broad coalition of Canadians. To do so, he needs to visibly cut ties with his own party’s radical right.

Sheila Copps is a former Jean Chrétien-era cabinet minister and a former deputy prime minister. Follow her on Twitter at @Sheila_Copps.

Conservative Party Leader Andrew Scheer says he supports equality for women, paying homage to his own mother who sponsored a refugee group during an immigration announcement last week. But his actions, and those of his party, tell a different story.

By Sheila Copps
First published in The Hill Times on June 3, 2019.

OTTAWA—The usual suspects are lining up telling Canadian women to shut up about the abortion question.

Anti-feminist Margaret Wente penned a column last week accusing Liberals of creating a false issue.

Talk show hosts joined with Global Television’s Ottawa bureau chief David Akin to downplay any concern on abortion access in this country.

“Alarming rhetoric aside, there is no serious threat to abortion rights in Canada,” said Calgary talk show host Rob Breakenridge on a Global newsfeed.

Similar pundits went crazy when newly-elected prime minister Justin Trudeau set a precedent by making gender equality a crucial element of cabinet making.

The national press gallery pounced on Trudeau when he left Rideau Hall, demanding to know why he would ever introduce a notion like gender parity in cabinet appointments.

“Because it’s 2015,” was an answer that left them speechless. That same answer prompted millions of women around the country to celebrate the fact that Canada would finally have equal numbers of women and men in cabinet.

Just last week South African President Cyril Ramphosa announced a parity cabinet, joining Rwanda and Ethiopia in the rarefied club of African equals.

If he wins the election, the Canadian leader of the opposition won’t be joining that club.

Conservative Party Leader Andrew Scheer says he supports equality for women, paying homage to his own mother who sponsored a refugee group during an immigration announcement last week.

But his actions, and those of his party, tell a different story.

Instead of committing to cabinet parity, Scheer leads the only political party in Canada that still refuses to set targets for recruitment of women candidates.

Equal Voice, a non-partisan organization designed to promote the election of more women, polled every party in the last election and all responded with specific goals, except the Conservatives.

Scheer also slapped women in the face when he named a vocal anti-choice advocate as his Status of Women shadow minister, or party critic.

Before the appointment, Member of Parliament Rachael Harder, an anti-abortionist, was reported by iPolitics to have approved $12,000 in federal funding grants to two pregnancy care centres that refuse to refer clients to abortion centres.

Defending his decision, Scheer said, “Harder is a very, very strong, hard working, dynamic young MP and a woman who was democratically elected by her constituents and who shares my positive vision for a government.”

Just what that vision is remains murky.

The following communiqué was sent in 2017 to members of RightNow, an anti-abortion group. The message summarized a meeting held with leadership hopeful Scheer.

“Andrew Scheer has said that the government will not introduce legislation on abortion. When leadership candidates (or even elected leaders) of political parties say that, it means the cabinet. Let’s say the Conservatives win 180 seats in the next federal election and of the 180 MPs, 30 of them are in cabinet. That means 150 other Conservative MPs would be allowed to introduce a private member’s bill on this. He also never said that he would whip his cabinet not to vote for pro-life motions or bills nor did he say he himself would not vote for them either.”

Scheer won the leadership by a vote of less than two per cent. His main opponent was pro-choice. To curry anti-abortion support, he bragged that he had always supported “pro-life” legislation.

In a corollary move last week, Scheer also promised to reopen the Office of Religious Freedoms in Canada, opened by Stephen Harper in 2013.

There is only one other country in the world that has such an office, the United States of America, a country that has been aggressively legislating to reduce access to safe abortions.

In a shocking report from Harvard Medical School, American women today are 50 per cent more likely to die in childbirth than their mothers.

Researchers report that the risk is also consistently three to four times higher for black women than white women, irrespective of income or education.

The death rate per 100,000 women has jumped from 17 to 26 in the past quarter century. Maternal mortality is still lower than in most of the world.

In developing countries, the ratio in 2015 was 239 deaths per 100,000 live births. The World Health Organization cites unsafe abortions as a key contributor.

Former Conservative prime minister Stephen Harper blocked aid to international organizations that offered reproductive choices.

Why should Canadians shut up when women around the world die because they cannot access safe abortions?

Scheer tipped his hand in his anti-choice appointment to Status of Women chair. He would reverse women’s gains, on many fronts.

Sheila Copps is a former Jean Chrétien-era cabinet minister and a former deputy prime minister. Follow her on Twitter at @Sheila_Copps.