Culture Wars are over but maybe the base can make some noise.

Chris Selley writes that the Liberals still don’t get why people are so upset by the abortion clause in Summer Jobs program.

Culture War not necessary

She would call it chutzpah that the Liberals have criticized the Conservative suggestion that funding to Dogwood, a B.C. environmental group was a Liberal defense of free speech. Her quote from the debate is “unlike apparently the leader of the official opposition, we believe in free speech.”

She is not convinced the Liberals and their most ardent supporters actually understand why people object so strenuously to the way they have handled the anti-abortion carve-out to the Summer Jobs Program.


The most logical way to ensure that government money isn’t spent advocating for or against a government policy is to stipulate that it not be so spent. “Tick this box to affirm that your summer employee will not participate in any anti-abortion/anti-pipeline/anti-whatever activities.” Easy peasy. Instead bureaucrats somehow came up with this: an applicant organization has to attest that “both the job and my organization’s core mandate respect individual human rights in Canada, including the values underlying the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms as well as other rights. These include reproductive rights.”

In 2015 Bill Blaikie, a veteran of Parliamentary battles on abortion, wrote that In spite of the fact that the new Conservative Party continued to seek votes in 2004 and 2006 on the basis of opposition to same sex marriage and abortion, it’s time in government from 2006 to 2015 would prove disappointing to those who cast their ballots on that basis.

The political right may have benefited from the culture wars for a time in gathering votes from Canadians who might not have supported their economic policies. In the end they have nothing to show for it, either to their temporary supporters or to their base. This reality, in combination with other factors such as the expanding political consciousness of many young evangelicals to include issues like climate change and poverty reduction, and Pope Francis encouraging Catholics to do likewise, constitutes the beginning of a new era in Canadian politics that has yet to fully reveal itself.

The strenuous effort the Liberals put forth is confusing because reproductive rights legislation in Canada is not likely to change anytime soon. A possible strategy to stir up the base over a false threat to these rights seems to have produced more pain than gain for the party even as the misunderstanding of the issue spread from the Prime Minister to some public commentators who expressed determination to go to the wall to protect rights that were never in danger.

The political downside

The downside for the Liberals seems to be recognition, in the light of the Dogwood, a B.C. environmental group, that “free speech” is a value that depends on what you have to say. Some commentators have compared the attestation requirement in the summer jobs to a values test that reminded some of the Harper era. Chris Selley adds..

If Team Trudeau really can’t wrap its mind around the nature of devout religious faith, despite an obvious imperative to do so, then perhaps this Dogwood episode can ram it through their skulls. You don’t need to be religious to understand. Just flip it around. Imagine the Conservative government had decided to nix summer jobs funding for anti-pipeline advocacy (not much of a stretch), or to throw a rare bone to its social-conservative wing and refuse to fund pro-choice advocacy. It would have been well within their rights, but people would have howled.

Was the summer job application a strategic error? Was it a distraction and diversion? Was it a values test? It was a disappointment to some Canadian youth and recipients of the work they may have done this summer.

References

(2015, December 18). Are the culture wars over in Canada? - Broadbent Institute. Retrieved April 27, 2018, from http://www.broadbentinstitute.ca/billblaikie/culture_wars_canada

(2018, April 26). Chris Selley: Liberals still don't get why people are so upset by .... Retrieved April 27, 2018, from http://nationalpost.com/opinion/chris-selley-with-summer-jobs-grants-liberals-determined-to-police-belief-rather-than-behaviour