Soconvivium

Our Canadian election campaign watch is off today and tomorrow, as well as other bloggy musings, unless something big happens. Meetings, meetings, and more meetings are to blame.

Kathy Shaidle points to Ezra Levant who said: If we were the CBC or CTV, you wouldn’t have to ask for the channel. It would be forced on you. In fact, under Canadian broadcasting law, every cable provider must carry CBC and CTV, and every single cable subscriber (that would be you) is forced to pay for it, whether you watch it [...]

LifeSiteNews has a Spring fundraising campaign and today is the last day. Please support LSN and its daily pro-life, pro-family journalism with a financial donation. The Interim reprints LSN stories and uses their reports as the basis for our news briefs. Pro-life activists around the world rely on the information they get from LifeSiteNews. In Canada, especially, where we lack the media infrastructure [...]

I got an email from Link Byfield regarding my post earlier today in which I was overly sarcastic in suggesting that he has serially “given up on federal politics,” which was unfair. Byfield wrote:  Good blog post on Harper.  You say in it I have given up on federal politics. You misapprehend me – I have been moving this past decade towards federalism [...]

Elizabeth May, who has been fighting to be included in the federal leaders debate, has said she will not be part of "The Other Parties Discussion," or what is labelled by some as a fringe party leaders debate that would include the Pirate, Libertarian, CHP, Rhinoceros, and other parties. May has been crying about the assault on democracy that her non-inclusion in the main [...]

The NDP tweets: "Caring for our parents and raising the next generation are probably the most important things we do as families - @jacklayton #elxn41 #ndp" I agree, but does the stridently pro-abortion NDP really believe that raising the next generation is the most important thing families do? If so, why do they favour increased access to abortion which eliminates so many [...]

Abortion got mentioned on the campaign trail with Prime Minister Stephen Harper saying he has "no intention of opening up" issues such as abortion if the Conservatives win a majority. While in the Welland riding in southwest Ontario, Harper said: "Our agenda is the same agenda with a majority government or a minority government." See the full story in the National Post, Globe and Mail, [...]

Earlier today we blogged about Day 10 of the Canadian election campaign and noted that abortion had yet to be mentioned on the campaign trail. Of course, no sooner had we posted that and the Prime Minister was asked about abortion and other social issues. He denied any interest in re-opening the abortion issue if the Conservatives win a majority. Disappointing but [...]

Ten days into the campaign and the Liberals/NDP/Bloc have yet to drop the "hidden agenda" bomb. There is plenty of time for the Coalition Left to use social issues in an attempt to make the Conservatives look scary, but it is far from clear it works (see 2004, 2006, 2008). My own theory is that Liberal fear-mongering on abortion/same-sex marriage drove many [...]

In a column on the similarities of the Conservatives and Liberals in terms economics and relation between government and the governed (excessively centrist with elections fought "between the 45-yard lines") Conrad Black notes that the only major difference between the left and right is abortion: The right-left distinction is down to Liberal demands for more daycare and the conditionalizing of foreign aid on aggressive abortion programs, [...]

This Michael Swan article in the Catholic Register implicitly sets up the false dichotomy of moral values vs. social justice. Note that Swan implies pro-lifers are single issue voters. Campaign Life Coalition is ready for the election. As Jim Hughes says, "There is nothing more important than saving life." As Joseph Sobran pointed out years ago, abortion is the ultimate issue, so single-issue [...]

Amnesty International released a report today condemning Canada for failing to live up to its reputation (in AI's eyes) as a worldwide leader in human rights promotion. (Full report is available as a PDF here.)  Among the complaints in the report is that Ottawa has cut funding for feminist NGOs and that the Harper government's G8 maternal health initiative (the so-called Muskoka Initiative) did [...]

Seems like day 155. Yesterday all the discussion was about Green Party leader Elizabeth May being excluded from the leader's debate. This, May and her supporters say, is undemocratic because all views should be represented. May told reporters she will ask the uncomfortable questions no one else asks. But if the criteria is that all views be represented and leaders who ask difficult [...]

Rep. Mike Pence has an excellent piece at NRO about the need to defund Planned Parenthood. Bottom line: PP does not help women. PP and their media sycophants like to say that defunding Planned Parenthood will jeopardize women's health because it will put at risk the organization's ability to provide, for example, mammograms. Live Action exposed that lie and conclusded that "Planned Parenthood is not [...]

Rory Leishman's March column is on politicians who duck dealing with moral issues; he's looking specifically at Stephen Harper who stated in a January interview that he would not raise the abortion issue, even if he won a majority. (Indeed, he said of abortion: “I have spent my political career trying to stay out of that issue.”) Of course, as Leishman notes, politicians are all too [...]