Josie Luetke:

The mistake was in believing Pierre Poilievre was our political saviour. From the sense of crushing disappointment amongst friends and family members in the wake of the 2025 federal election, you’d almost think the leader of the Conservative Party of Canada is pro-life. Almost.

April 28 was disappointing to me for another reason. At the Waterloo Catholic District School Board meeting that night, a motion that would have barred the Pride flag from being flown lost by just one vote—former board chair Trustee Robert Sikora flipped. To rub salt in the wound, Fr. Toby Collins, the pastor at St. Mary’s Church in Kitchener, delegated—get this—in favour of the Pride flag, seemingly without any (public) reprimand or response from Hamilton Bishop Douglas Crosby.

This, after the Halton Catholic District School Board voted earlier in the month against a motion that would have ensured any funds raised within the board be directed to charities that do not directly or indirectly support abortion, abortifacient contraception, embryonic stem cell research, or euthanasia. I contacted nearly every Catholic church in the region, and while some priests were privately supportive, I’m not aware of any who were able to stand in public support.

And while Poilievre isn’t pro-life, you know who is? Wally Daudrich, who received 53 more votes than social liberal Obby Khan in the race for the leadership of Manitoba’s Progressive Conservative Party, but ultimately lost by 0.4 per cent, also in April, because the party uses a system that assigns points based on constituency. I met Daudrich at a local right-to-life dinner in the fall actually, so he’s legitimate, and not just a pro-lifer in name only.

So, with that context, the federal election results were not that surprising to me, and given my managed expectations … not particularly devastating.

I don’t want to downplay how terrible a Mark Carney government may be, but a Conservative government could have set some very bad precedents too.

Poilievre actually spoke more about abortion and “a woman’s right to decide” than the Liberal leader. On the first day of the election campaign, Carney said, “I absolutely support a woman’s right to choose, unreservedly, and will defend it as the Liberal party has defended it, proudly and consistently,” and he otherwise made relatively few mentions of the topic.

Meanwhile, to quell Conservatives-will-reopen-the-abortion-debate rumours (which I wish were true), Poilievre strongly and repeatedly proclaimed his support for abortion.

At a campaign stop in St. Catharines, for instance, Poilievre said, “I can guarantee you there will be no laws restricting abortion passed when I’m prime minister,” raising the question of what would happen if a MP wanted to introduce a pro-life private members’ bill. Would he allow a free vote on the bill, as the CPC Policy Declaration pledges? If so, how could he make such a guarantee that no restrictions on abortion would pass?

In the lead-up to the election, the Conservatives also disqualified a number of pro-life candidates from running for nomination in their local ridings, and ended up just appointing many candidates, which is anti-democratic and insulting to party grassroots.

Regardless of which party you support, preserving a pro-life voice in Parliament is paramount. The potential castration of pro-life MPs under Poilievre would be catastrophic.

Poilievre retains the leadership for now, but I hope he and his political advisors feel chastened. Since time immemorial, the Conservatives have thrown social conservatives under the bus, and yet, they came up short once again. They compromised…and for what? Their strategy failed. The “experts” are idiots. I’ll repeat the cliché, attributed to Albert Einstein: “Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.” The biggest mistake we could make going forward is listening to the same advisors who flubbed the campaign when they pretend to diagnose what went wrong and inevitably blamed social conservatives.

Still, no one is thrilled with the re-election of a fourth Liberal government in a row (except Liberals, I guess). They’re going to make the Sexual and Reproductive Health Fund program permanent, which basically just funnels your taxpayer dollars to pro-abortion advocacy groups; establish a new program providing up to $20,000 for an in vitro fertilization cycle; and forge ahead with their plan to provide free contraception.

Also remaining is the question of whether they’ll permit euthanasia to be extended to those suffering solely from mental illness, as currently scheduled for 2027, but this was somewhat of an outstanding question for a prospective Conservative government too. (Referring to euthanasia as a “right,” Poilievre said they wouldn’t expand it “beyond the existing parameters,” but didn’t address the detail that the exclusion of mental illness from eligibility criteria is set to expire, unless MPs actively intervene.)

The “sunny ways” promised a decade ago never materialized, and there’s no sun on this horizon. Buckle up.

Sr. Theresa Aletheia Noble, branded by the New York Times as the “Nun Who Wants You to Remember You Will Die,” tweeted a few years ago: “The Christian should expect to be regularly crushed under the inexorable wheels of history until Jesus comes again. We are not here to be relevant, powerful, and understood. Our challenge is to simply remain faithful to the Gospel, to love our enemies, and to persevere in faith.”

So, again, we shouldn’t be surprised by the election results; they are to be expected in a country that has lost God.

Some Canadians, especially in the West, are talking about secession or defection to the United States. I can sympathize, especially if you have children whose upbringing you must prioritize. 

I, on the other hand, am prepared to go down with the ship. Battle lines are being drawn, evil is becoming ever balder, and fence-sitters are waking up and being forced to a side. (Indeed, in various places the Church is rejoicing in a record number of conversions.) As I’ve remarked before, I appreciate the clarity. The stakes have crystallized.

With every worldly setback over the past few months, the gift of my faith has been put into relief—that I don’t need belonging or utopia in this country, or even on this planet, because I have a Heavenly home.

And what an honour it is to be a missionary in our world today! What opportunity we have to be prophetic voices! We don’t even have to try that hard; the truth speaks for itself. We don’t have to be particularly eloquent or wise. To a starving man, even a boiled potato nourishes. Our witness is all the more special because it is so rare and foreign in this time of moral and spiritual impoverishment. We are entrusted with almost-forgotten truths and the sacred responsibility of their preservation and propagation.

In a reflection on the loss of the Sanctity of Life motion at the Halton Catholic District School Board, fellow Interim writer Donald DeMarco quoted Saint John Paul II from his Cardinal days: “May this light give us strength and make us capable of accepting and loving the whole truth of Christ, of loving it all the more as the world all the more contradicts it.”

The light of Truth shines all the brighter in darkness.