Excerpt from the March 2002 Campaign Life Coalition National News

CLC’s role in politics

CLC is the political arm of the Canadian pro-life movement. We do not endorse any one political party; instead, we educate MPs, provincial representatives and candidates for these offices about issues affecting life and family. We also help you, the grassroots, get involved in your favourite political parties to help you make informed decisions during general elections and leadership races.

In recent weeks, some of our supporters have called us after we sent a letter encouraging those of you who support the Canadian Alliance to get a membership and become involved, and our Ontario supporters who are inclined to support the provincial Tories to do the same thing. This is not an endorsement of either party nor of any of the candidates. Rather, we are assisting those who want to take part in the leadership races to renew memberships, look at the candidates’ stand on life and family issues and vote accordingly. We do this during every leadership race, regardless of party. Remember Tories for Life and Liberals for Life in the late 1980s and early 1990s? We also endorse the totally pro-life Christian Heritage and Family Coalition parties.

Canadian Alliance leadership controversy

After doing much to reach out to social conservatives, the Stephen Harper campaign unexpectedly began to attack Stockwell Day saying he is depending upon pro-lifers and the “religious right” for his re-election. During the February 2 leadership debate in Calgary, Harper said Day is “pushing” to have the CA become “a pro-life party.” Harper re-iterated his thinking that “I think it’s important that the party’s position is that we don’t have a party position on abortion ­ that it’s not a litmus test and that we’re open to people with a wide range of views on that issue,” as he accused Day of focussing his campaign on the abortion issue. Funny, however, that Day only addresses the issue when reporters or his opponents ask him about it, so who, really, is focussing on the issue? During the debate, Day said “I’m here to say that for all of our citizens, part of my job is to represent them, and if they have a legitimate interest and legitimate concern, then our party is the only party that has a way of addressing that, and that is through open and democratic discussion and a vote on whatever the issue might be. No group will be barred as long as I am leader.”

The week following Harper’s attack on Day, he turned his sights on CLC. His campaign tried to do what almost every party has tried to do, namely make their party a closed club. Professor Tom Flanagan, Harper’s campaign manager, in trying to thwart our efforts to assist CLC supporters in the Canadian Alliance, is seeking to marginalize social conservatives. We are also disappointed in Harper, who, as President of the National Citizens Coalition, fought federal government regulations limiting third-party participation (like the NCC, CLC and many others) in the political process. It is interesting to note that Flanagan and Harper don’t seem to have a problem limiting organizations such as ourselves in the CA leadership race. What is the difference?

We don’t normally endorse any candidate, but remind you that support for abortion should be a disqualifying factor for candidates seeking your support. Abortion is not like “any other issue”; it is literally a matter of life and death. Although we agree that taxes, health care, immigration and many other issues are important, they are simply not as important as abortion, euthanasia, infanticide and similar issues about the life or death of vulnerable people.

We are happy to report that CLC extended invitations to each leadership candidate and that Day and Grant Hill both agreed to meet with us (the Day meeting has already taken place and we had a friendly, but also frank discussion about life and family issues). We received a mixed reaction from the Harper campaign and then a refusal to answer, and no notice from the Diane Ablonczy team.

Contrary to irresponsible media reports, we have not been signing up people to the Alliance on behalf of the Day campaign. We have also not recommended at this time any single candidate. We asked you, our supporters who were Alliance inclined, to sign up online with the party, through your constituency offices, or by filling out a legitimate membership application form and sending in your registration fee and we would forward both to the party. We have not, again according to media, been asking supporters for donations with which to buy bulk party memberships.

This Alliance leadership race does not have anywhere near the same unity of opinion among pro-lifers as the last one. Pro-life Alliance members have indicated they will be voting for Day, Hill and, yes, many have said they would vote for Stephen Harper. Harper seems to have moved a bit in the pro-life direction and has at least indicated that he would respect the democratic Alliance process on abortion and similar issues, although recent developments leave that more open to question.

Responses to the CLC questionnaire

We sent out questionnaires and have already received a favourable response from Day, who is pro-life. We were surprised and disappointed by Hill’s response, which was perhaps a result of poor advice from the people around him. Hill is now pro-life with exceptions. Harper said he will not respond to the questionnaire and we have yet to hear from Ablonczy. However, Ablonczy seemed to distance herself from previous (mild) pro-life statements, saying (on Global Sunday with Charles Adler) she tends to be “more on the pro-life end of the spectrum,” but added that was merely her personal view and could not envisage any consideration of legal protection for the unborn and suddenly considered the abortion issue one of “personal choice.”

Lastly, we warn you not to trust everything you read in the papers and see on TV. Many journalists have an agenda greatly at odds with our own. When they can paint us, in the words of one report, as renegades who do not play by the rules, they (the media) are trying to marginalize us. It is especially disturbing when pro-life Canadians believe such spin-doctoring and feel they should no longer support us. Thank God that most of you know that the most reliable news sources for life and family issues are the CLC National News, The Interim and LifeSite.