The Liberals will return as government, albeit with a reduced large minority of 157 seats, down from 184 in 2015. The Conservatives gained roughly a half million votes and won the popular vote 34.4 per cent to 33.1 for the Liberals, yet won just 121 seats, up from 99 four years ago. The Bloc more than tripled their seat total, winning 32 of Quebec’s 78 seats, up from 10 in 2015, while the NDP lost seats, falling from 44 to 24. Independent Jody Wilson-Raybould, former Attorney General and central character in the SNC-Lavalin controversy earlier this year, won her independent bid in Vancouver-Granville and the Green Party trebled its representation with two new MPs joining leader Elizabeth May. The upstart People’s Party of Canada captured less than two per cent of the vote nationally, with leader (and former Conservative cabinet minister) Maxime Bernier losing his seat in Beauce, Quebec.
The Liberals were 13 seats short of a majority, but considering that neither the Bloc nor the NDP would be eager for a new election campaign any time soon – the former because of its improved showing, the latter because it cannot afford another campaign in the immediate future – Justin Trudeau’s minority government could be stable for at least two years.
The conventional wisdom has it that it was a poor showing for all the parties except the Bloc. National Postcolumnist Andrew Coyne reported that neither the Conservatives nor Liberals reached far beyond their respective bases, with the Grits forming government with the lowest percentage of the vote in Canadian history for the party winning a plurality of the seats.
Campaign Life Coalition’s election analysis takes issue with this interpretation, arguing that Andrew Scheer abandoned both his principles and his base by insisting he would not reopen the abortion issue, going so far to say he would “ensure” his backbenchers would not be allowed to bring forward private members’ bills. Jack Fonseca, CLC’s director of political operations, wrote in the organization’s post-election analysis, the main “reason Scheer lost is because he failed to inspire the small-c conservative base, which includes pro-life social conservatives as a huge constituency.” By “stepping into a trap set by his Liberal opponents” who attacked “his past pro-life and pro-family beliefs,” the Conservative leader “insulted and alienated” a significant number of pro-life and pro-family voters. Scheer responded to Liberal attacks by insisting he would not reopen “divisive” moral issues like abortion and euthanasia and embracing the LGBT-agenda. He also blocked and removed pro-life and pro-family candidates. Scheer even said he would maintain Trudeau’s promise to spend $7 billion on foreign abortions over the next decade despite his campaign pledge to cut 25 per cent from the international aid budget. “These actions by Scheer left Christians and other people of faith with the perception that there is no appreciable difference on abortion among any of the parties,” Fonseca contends, and when election day came, many socially conservative voters either stayed home or voted for other parties based on other issues.
That’s hard to prove considering the Tories gained about a half million votes compared to not only their 2015 results but roughly 300,000 votes from their 2011 victory. But it’s a plausible theory for the poor Conservative showing nation-wide despite ostensible Liberal weakness following numerous scandals and fiascoes over their four years in power, including the SNC-Lavalin scandal this past winter and the blackface controversy that arose during the election campaign. Fonseca wrote that because many pro-life and pro-family voters are among the most politically active citizens in the country, “when Scheer de-motivates social conservatives, much of (the party’s) voter and volunteer recruitment action evaporates.”
Campaign Life Coalition identified 148 candidates as “green light” pro-lifers – pro-life candidates without exceptions – and 67 of them were Conservative. Most of the other pro-life candidates ran for the Christian Heritage Party (46) and People’s Party of Canada (29) as well as one Libertarian and three independents.
CLC’s analysis found that of the 67 Conservatives who earned the organization’s top, green light rating, 46 won and 21 lost. Just under seven in ten pro-life Tories were elected. Furthermore, 20 of the 21 who did not win, finished second. CLC noted that is a “significant competitive advantage, compared with those to whom CLC rated as either a red light (pro-abortion) or an amber light (caution).” Of the remaining 270 Conservatives who did not earn a green light, 75 won and 195 lost, good for merely a 28 per cent success rate.
The Interim ran a regression analysis looking at demographically similar ridings, and while that analysis was not completed for all provinces by the time the paper went to press, it found that pro-lifers outperformed non-pro-lifers in like ridings. Pro-life Conservative candidates – whether or not they won – generally performed better than non-pro-lifers. This does not prove that being pro-life is necessarily an advantage, but it strongly suggests that being pro-life is not the political liability that many political strategists and pundits believe it is. In Regina-Wascana, prominent Liberal cabinet minister Ralph Goodale, who has held the riding since 1993, was soundly defeated by pro-life Conservative Michael Kram, who won with nearly half the vote, more than 7,000 votes ahead of the long-time incumbent.
Overall, across the country, a majority of ridings outside Quebec had a “green light pro-life candidate” and pro-life candidates won more than 1.94 million votes, or 9.2 per cent of the vote. By comparison, the Greens, which had candidates in almost every riding, won just 1.16 million votes.
Jeff Gunnarson, national president of CLC, said that the pro-life breakthrough reflected the success grassroots pro-lifers had in nominating pro-life candidates across the country long before the election was called and the work volunteers put in supporting pro-life candidates. “By mobilizing our 200,000-strong supporter database to volunteer and get-out-the-vote, we helped many pro-life candidates win, including in some close races where our engaged and dedicated supporters made the difference,” Gunnarson said.
Gunnarson also noted the number of ridings where there was a pro-life candidate and the total pro-life vote “speaks volumes about the hunger among grassroots pro-lifers to have elected officials represent their values and principles. This is very positive and encouraging for the pro-life movement and for the future of Canada.”
In 2015, 23 pro-life incumbents lost as part of the Liberal wave that swept Justin Trudeau to power, and in total there were just 40 pro-life MPs elected. This year, only one incumbent lost – Harold Albrecht in Kitchener-Conestoga – and a total 46 pro-life MPs were elected, including ten new MPs.
The Christian Heritage Party won 18,816 votes nation-wide in 51 ridings, for an average vote of 369 votes for each candidate.
CHP deputy leader Peter Vogel wrote in his election post-mortem, “Many voters in this election felt that there was no main issue to motivate them, no main leader to inspire them, no new ideas worthy of true debate. Of course, there actually were issues that should have motivated more people more strongly (the continued killing of the pre-born, for one) and there are smaller parties that have inspirational leaders and new ideas – CHP, for instance. But for all practical purposes, those parties, those leaders and those ideas were ignored by the national media.”
Some pro-life groups accused CLC – usually without naming Campaign Life Coalition – of dividing the pro-life vote because it backed pro-life candidates regardless of party, whether it was the CHP or People’s Party. But The Interim’sanalysis of this claim finds that the People’s Party probably only affected seven ridings if you assume that all People’s Party votes would have gone to the Conservatives. (Not a safe assumption.) But Harold Albrecht was the only pro-life Conservative to lose to his or her opponent by a margin smaller than the People’s Party vote, and in Kitchener-Conestoga, the People’s Party candidate was not pro-life and thus not supported by CLC or other pro-life groups.
Campaign Life Coalition was “disappointed” with Trudeau’s reelection considering that he legalized euthanasia and assisted suicide, banned pro-lifers from running for the Liberals, forced private enterprise and charities to sign a pro-abortion attestation in order to receive federal summer jobs funding, expanded abortion access in Canada, and committed billions to foreign abortion and abortion advocacy. CLC also notes that even with a minority government, Trudeau can continue to pass anti-life and anti-family policies with the help of NDP, Bloc Quebecois, and Greens.
Gunnarson said in a statement, “Regardless of what the prime ministerial hopefuls said during the campaign about abortion, we remind the leaders and MPs that in Canada, our parliamentary tradition holds that MPs are free to act on their conscience on moral issues.” He continued: “We hope that they will be free not only to vote their consciences on such legislation and motions, but be allowed to bring forward private members’ bills to address the most important moral issues facing the country.”
Gunnarson toldThe Interimthat CLC will begin lobbying parliamentarians to enact pro-life laws and protect vulnerable people from the growing scourge of euthanasia, prepare for potential leadership races that may result from the election fallout, and begin the work of nominating pro-lifers across the country. “Election day is the culmination of the work in one round in the never-ending battle to turn back the culture of death, but it is also the beginning of the next round.”
“Pro-life work,” Gunnarson explained, “never ends.”
