How To Achieve A Small Deficit In The Polls? Give Justin Trudeau A Large Lead And Let Him Talk About Reproductive Rights

There is something touching with prime minister Justin Trudeau’s blithe assumptions about Canadian values. His SJW sanctimony allows him to wade into debates that sober men and women in politics would otherwise avoid. The results are anything but pristine.

His performance— and that of his subordinate Bill Morneau— around the 2017 budget speaks to a pure heart, a clear conscience and a steady retreat from reality. Guided by principles of fairness developed over 40 years of exercising his own privilege, Trudeau decided to label small business people and farmers as tax grifters. It went over about as well as you might have expected.

His compulsion to be PM of all the people led him to India for an extended photo op, sporting all manner of native cultural attire with his photogenic brood in tow. Who could begrudge him getting jiggy in jodhpurs to reinforce his diversity gene? Apparently a lot of folks.

His plaintive desire to hobnob with world titans caused him to take an expenses-paid trip to visit the Aga Khan. And fall afoul of the ethics commissioner.

Now, prime minister Happy Ways has decided that his stance on reproductive rights— the one imposed by fiat on his party— is, in fact, the law of the land. Ergo, religious and other groups of conscience have to buy into his absolutist view of abortion, or else no soup (or summer jobs) for them.

This righteous path has led the Liberals from a 20-point lead in the polls to a five-point deficit behind a party led by a leader that few Canadians can even name. Not since the Toronto Blue Jays frittered away a 3 1/2-game lead over the Detroit Tigers in the final week of 1987 has there been such a choke north of the border.

Not only has Trudeau’s virtue signalling sent the Liberals plummeting, he’s inadvertently put one of the Left’s cherished issues— abortion— back in the public spotlight. Which is not where he, they or their media lap doggies want it, unregulated abortion having worked just fine so far in burnishing their feminist bonafides.

That’s why this summer-jobs file has gone from simple graft to Clean Up In Aisle 3 for progressives. There is a sense that in Trudeau’s strong-arming of religious groups on the issue, he’s left an opening to finally resolve The Issue That Dared Not Speak Its Name.

Since the Supreme Court threw out the last law in 1988 and Kim Campbell’s subsequent revision died in the Senate, Canadian politicians have steered clear of the issue. Whipsawed between faith groups and fanatical feminists on the issue, no Canadian government has dared test the public’s temperature on abortion. 

They’ve been aided by the total fatwa placed on the issue by the Canadian media. All this in spite of a sentiment that maybe it is time Canada grew up and enacted laws like those every other civilized nation has passed. For a party that schvitzes anytime the world community passes judgment on Canada, this out-of-step posture is curious for Liberals. After all, what would Michael Moore say?

Some may insist there’s no law like no law. But whatever your side in the debate, surely Canadians can agree that no law is not the mature response to an issue that needs clarity. 

As I wrote here when Trudeau first stepped into the muck in December (http://www.notthepublicbroadcaster.com/the-usual-suspects/2017/12/20/v74q8kvsz4arzt4josxgalea1hhwv5 ) “… medical innovation has shifted the issue since Canada’s pols ran like Good Sir Robin away from the fight. In today’s world, 50 to 70 percent of babies born at 24 to 25 weeks, and more than 90 percent born at 26 to 27 weeks, survive. Conditions such as Down Syndrome are no longer seen as socially acceptable reasons to terminate a pregnancy. There is a need for children for adoption.

In short, the 1980s feminist all-or-nothing standard on abortion feared by politicians has been trumped by a more nuanced reality. All these factors have lurked in the background as the public debate was stilled. But if Trudeau wishes to use the absolute abortion standard of urban progressives as a yardstick to measure funding viability he may find a public far more willing to accept limits on ending some pregnancies than it was even a decade ago.

He’ll find out his unrestricted standard lies outside the norms of  the progressive global community he reveres. Forty-three U.S. states have laws restricting “post-viability abortions”. European nations, too, have imposed limits on when a child is viable outside the womb. Canada stands virtually alone in its refusal to define life.”

Now, in saunters Mr. Trudeau, who feels that, if he believes it to be so, pro choice is the law of the land. (Perhaps he and  Mr. Gerald Butts, his policy Sancho Panza, snuck into the Supreme Court late one night and scrawled it in using their free Aga Khan pen sets?) He says, no abortion, no handouts.

Conservative leader Andrew Scheer has the opportunity to hammer the PM over his autocratic bent. (So did Stephen Harper but he lost his nerve.) He needs to suggest the compromises achieved in Europe and America— not Mr. Trudeau’s deepest feelings— are proper legal guide posts to a new law.

He needs to tell Canadian that a mature modern nation can’t play “who stole my kishka?” On an issue this important. He has to show courage in the face of what will be withering media criticism and far-left political theatre.

There’s a place in history for him if he does. And, likely, still the PM’s office. We know that Trudeau has left the door open for him. 

Bruce Dowbiggin @dowbboy.is the host of the podcast The Full Count with Bruce Dowbiggin on anticanetwork.com. He’s also a regular contributor three-times-a-week to Sirius XM Canada Talks Ch. 167. A two-time winner of the Gemini Award as Canada's top television sports broadcaster, he is also the best-selling author of seven books. His website is Not The Public Broadcaster (http://www.notthepublicbroadcaster.com)