Greetings one and all from the land of the Throne Speech, which opened the latest session of Parliament early last month. I don’t hear many people talking about the prime minister’s Throne Speech, but social conservative circles have been all abuzz lately with the Reform leader’s response to it, and the reaffirmation of his pro-life and pro-family sentiment.

You think you’ve heard enough about our new Governor-General Adrienne Clarkson, do you? Well, David Murrell, the New Brunswick publisher of a relatively new government accountability newsletter called WatchDog, has provided some very troubling material on her.

Mr. Murrell reported that, upon Ms Clarkson’s breakup with her first husband, Stephen Clarkson, her daughters actually sought to be adopted by their father’s new wife. Furthermore, “in the Canadian Who’s Who, Ms Clarkson refuses to acknowledge her daughters in her biography.” Most of you are probably aware that she was living with her current hubby prior to her appointment as G-G, at which time she engaged in a hurried marriage.

Mr. Murrell also reported that while Ms Clarkson was president of publisher McLelland and Stewart, “she gave a speech to a group of female educators (in which) she stated that women who have hiring power … should actively discriminate against men and hire only women.”

Further evidence of her strident feminist attitude was the embarrassing level of excitement she showed at the recent unveiling of a statue of the Famous Five in Calgary. The Famous Five were the women who succeeded in having Canada declare women to be “persons” in the Constitution.

At least one of them was a race-based eugenicist.

Arguing that Ms Clarkson’s radical leftist ideology permeated just about all issues she touched, Mr. Murrell reported on her chairmanship of the board of directors at the Canadian Museum of Civilization, which also gave her responsibility over the Canadian War Museum. During this time, she tried to impose a politically correct agenda, including historical revisionism, on the the war museum.

The controversial proposal to set up a Holocaust War Museum took place under her leadership – although it couldn’t be justified under the mandate of the Canadian War Museum, which is to document Canadian participation in War. She was also in leadership at the museum when it refused to buy the collection of medals belonging to John McCrea, the author of the internationally recognized In Flander’s Fields poem. Regardless of one’s view of war, this kind of politicization and revisionism cannot be justified.

Conscience bill reintroduced

Reform MP Maurice Vellacott has reintroduced a conscience clause bill for this session of Parliament. It is bill number C-207. As of this writing, Reform MP Jim Pankiw should have also reintroduced his abortion defunding bill. You will be updated on this in the next issue of The Interim.

The anniversary of the world’s six billionth birth has our politically correct MPs embarrassing themselves with their regurgitation of long-refuted mythology about population growth. Liberal feminist Jean Augustine has been joined by Reformer Keith Martin in calls for more population control to save the world.

Also, in Question Period last month in the House of Commons, new pro-abort cabinet minister Maria Minna, in answer to a question about population control, responded in part: “Much of CIDA’s programming is devoted to supporting women in developing countries, including their quality of life, as well as targeting funding for reproductive health programming.”

The prime minister, in his Throne Speech, promised to increase “international development assistance.” He didn’t point out that this money, taken from the pockets of hard-working Canadians, more often than not is channelled into politically correct, globalist initiatives that are usually tied to some form of population control, rather than being used to meet the real needs of underprivileged people.

One of the PM’s attempts to appear concerned about the family was to promise that parental leave would be extended to one year. This proposal has already met with outrage on talk shows and elsewhere around the country by parents who want to raise their own children for the first five crucial years of their development, not for only one-fifth of that time period. This proposal continues to reflect a Liberal government mentality which gives deference to women who are working. Apparently, the federal government still needs to be sensitized to Canadian women who remain at home to raise their children, along with all those who say they would make this choice if they could afford to do so.