Paul Tuns, Analysis:
According to Campaign Life Coalition, there were 42 green-lighted candidates elected MP on April 28, up six from the previous Parliament.
CLC gave the green light to more than 150 candidates among four parties – the Conservatives, Christian Heritage Party of Canada, United Party of Canada, and Libertarians – who were pro-life without exceptions based on answers to the organization’s questionnaire, candidates’ public remarks, and, for incumbents, voting records. All 42 pro-life elected MPs are from the Conservative Party.
CLC national president Jeff Gunnarson said in a press release, “We especially congratulate the six new pro-life MPs who ran excellent campaigns and encourage them to bring the pro-life voice into our country’s hall of power.”
The federal election saw a significant increase in the number of Liberal and Conservative MPs, with the Liberals under new leader Mark Carney coming up three seats short of the 172 seats necessary for a majority.
When the election was called, there were 152 Liberal MPs, 120 Conservatives, 33 Bloc Quebecois, 24 NDP, and two Green MPs.
After the recounts were complete – four elections were so close that they merited closer scrutiny, one of which was decided by a single vote – the Liberals won 169 seats, Conservatives 144, BQ 22, NDP seven, and the Greens had one.
Despite the better showing for the Conservatives, leader Pierre Poilievre lost his Ottawa-area seat of Carleton. The number of pro-life MPs will fall by one after Damien Kurek, who easily won re-election in Battle River—Crowfoot (Alberta), announced he would step aside to allow Poilievre to run in the safe Conservative riding so the leader can return to Parliament.
The NDP failed to win enough seats to secure official party status which means they will not be guaranteed seats on committees and their funding will be limited.
While there were rumours of Mark Carney trying to poach MPs from the other parties to form government, it seems likely that the Liberals can safely govern as a majority with support from the NDP or BQ on an issue-by-issue basis and perhaps some strategic absences by those opposition parties when they deem it prudent to oppose the government but don’t want to bring it down.
Moral issues such as abortion, euthanasia, and transgenderism were barely mentioned during the campaign, other than in a perfunctory way as the four major parties focused on the economic impact of the tariffs imposed on Canada by U.S. President Donald Trump and the perceived threat to Canadian sovereignty by Trump’s comments about making Canada the 51st state.
On the first day of the election campaign, Liberal leader Mark Carney said he “unreservedly” supported abortion and the Liberal platform promised to make permanent a temporary funding program by the previous government to increase abortion access in Canada. For his part, Poilievre vowed that a Conservative government would not restrict abortion in any way, and incorrectly claimed that this had long been party policy (which permits free votes on issues of conscience). Poilievre also said he would not scale back Canada’s permissive euthanasia regime without clarifying whether that meant he would not go forward with a planned 2027 expansion of euthanasia for patients suffering solely from mental illness. He also said he would maintain the limited pharmacare program the previous government introduced that only covers contraception and diabetes care.
Campaign Life Coalition said in its CLC National News “We are disappointed … that each of the four largest parties remained committed to the status quo—abortion through all nine months of pregnancy, for any reason.” It said: “Particularly troubling were Pierre Poilievre’s repeated assurances that he is ‘pro-choice’ and if elected prime minister, a Conservative government under his leadership would “guarantee” no restrictions on abortion.” Gunnarson noted that “Poilievre defended abortion on more occasions than Carney.”
The popular narrative following election night was that the Conservatives snatched defeat from the jaws of victory considering the Conservatives had a 20-percentage point lead over the Liberals in December. Polling is a snapshot in time, and the lead came at the depth of Justin Trudeau’s unpopularity; a lot changed since then, including replacing Trudeau with Mark Carney and Trump’s belligerence towards Canada. Furthermore, at their best showing the Conservative were polling in the mid-40s and they ended up winning 41.3 per cent of the vote. They didn’t squander the support they had; the Liberals were victorious mostly because they won back disaffected Liberals and found more new voters than the Conservatives did.
Many pundits blamed Poilievre’s inability to pivot from the bulldog attack tactics of opposition leader to appearing more prime ministerial during the election campaign. There might be some validity to that. Angus Reid has been asking Canadians whether they have a positive or negative view of the party leaders and since last September, at least 49 per cent of Canadians have had a negative view of Pierre Poilievre; since February, the Conservative leader’s unfavourable rating has never been lower than 56 per cent and his favourability never better than 38 per cent. It is hard to win with those numbers as it is pretty clear that many more Canadians dislike Poilievre. It is notable that even when the Conservatives led the Liberals by 20 points in the polls in December, a majority of Canadians still had an unfavourable view of Poilievre, suggesting that he always had an uphill battle to become prime minister.
While the election news cycle was dominated by Donald Trump’s influence on the Canadian campaign, in many ways this election was a referendum on the Conservative leader as much as it was the track record of the previous Liberal government. According to Angus Reid, 45 per cent of people who voted Liberal said a key reason for their decision was to prevent the Conservatives from forming government.
It is hard to argue that Pierre Poilievre’s cynical tactic of adopting Liberal – and liberal — policies on abortion and euthanasia cost him votes. The Conservatives won 8.1 million votes on April 28 compared to the 5.75 million votes it won in 2021 under leader Erin O’Toole, an increase of nearly 2.4 million voters. The Liberals increased their vote total even more, from 5.5 million to 8.6 million, an increase of 3.1 million votes.
The collapse of the NDP vote from more than 3 million votes to just over 1.2 million, was seen as one reason for the Liberals edging out the Conservatives in many close ridings, and to a point that is true. But an analysis of the individual voting stations within ridings found that outside of Toronto and Vancouver, many formerly heavily NDP neighbourhoods ending up voting Conservative. That might have something to do with the fact that Conservatives polled well among voters who said they were struggling to make ends meet.
It is difficult to ascertain what, if any effect, moral issues had on this election but it is fair to assume that they were negligible for the vast majority of voters in Canada.
Three parties did not endorse the status quo of abortion-on-demand for all nine months.
People’s Party of Canada leader Maxime Bernier called for a third-trimester ban on abortion, a policy all but ignored by the corporate media. The PPC ran 247 candidates nationwide and they collectively garnered 136,977 votes – down from more than 800,000 in 2021. In ridings where the PPC had a candidate, they won, on average, 0.94 per cent of the vote.
Two parties were fully pro-life and had leaders who were green-lighted by CLC.
The Christian Heritage Party under Rod Taylor ran 34 candidates, garnering a total of 10,065 votes, or 0.46 per cent in the ridings in which they ran. Taylor won 1.34 per cent of the vote in his riding of Skeena-Bulkey Valley. Jacob Watson, who ran for the CHP in Oxford, in southwestern Ontario, won 1203 votes, good for 1.68 per cent. Both Taylor and Watson finished fourth, ahead of the Green Party candidate.
The United Party of Canada under Grant Abraham ran 16 candidates, garnering a total of 6,061 votes for the first-time party. They won 0.57 per cent of the vote in ridings in which they had candidates. Abraham finished third in the Alberta riding of Ponoka-Didsbury, garnering 2129 votes, good for 3.1 per cent of the vote.
Collectively, the three parties did not even win two per cent of the vote nationally suggesting a very difficult future for voters concerned about life and family issues.
