ONTARIO ELECTION 2003

LifeSite's Report on the Ontario Parties and Leaders

In the Sept. 20 Toronto Star, seasoned political columnist Ian Urquhart wrote:
" Abortion. Although both the Liberals and the Tories have pro-life candidates in their ranks, all three parties are officially pro-choice. That means the issue is never raised by these parties."

More that that, though, the leaderships of the three main parties have co-operated to advance abortion and anti-family policies in Ontario over the past few decades. So, Ontarians who understand the all-important need for policies to protect life and family, are not able to ethically cast a vote based on support for a particular party, other than the Family Coalition Party.

This election seems to provide the worst party and leadership choices ever for Ontarians. Financial Post editor-in-chief Terrence Corcoran titled his September 30 Ontario election column "The World's Worst Election". Corcoran goes on to write, "It's hard to believe any voter would want to cast a ballot for any of the three main party contenders, a trio of opportunistic and unprincipled policy grifters. When snake-oil salesmen roamed the continent, they had nothing on Howard Hampton of the NDP, Dalton McGuinty of the Liberals, and Ernie Eves, the Conservative Premier....There are no ideas in this travesty of a democratic exercise"

Corcoran is not commenting on the life and family issues, but if the leaders are so unprincipled on most other issues, they are certain to be worse on the deeper issues of respect for life, protection of family life and general morality.

BUT, CLC still strongly urges voters to consider the individual candidates, from whatever party, and ABOVE ALL their positions on the protection of human life. Candidates who have shown the courage and conviction to take pro-life and pro-family stands, in opposition to their leaders and parties, MUST be supported.

Again, CLC emphasizes that voters should forget the parties, except the Family Coalition Party, and instead vote for the individual candidates who have indicated they will stand up for the most important principles of all. Without such individuals in office, we will not have any MPPs to communicate with at the provincial level and to work with to eventually rebuild a culture a life and family in Ontario politics.

Family Coalition Party

This grassroots party is pro-life and pro-family without exception. In the party’s current Impact newsletter, leader Giuseppe Gori says the FCP opposes the great “moral evils” of abortion and same-sex “marriage.” But, he adds that the FCP is more than a single-issue party. “Our vision is not limited to these two stances in our detailed platform. Instead, the Family Coalition Party is a party that aims to strengthen the family in all areas of provincial jurisdiction, because the family is the fundamental building block of society and the government can never replace the family.”

See FCP website

Guiseppe Gori

Consistent record of supporting all pro-life, pro-family issues.

Liberal Party

The Liberal Party and its leadership in no way supports the pro-life/family agenda. In an effort to capture soft NDP support, the party has moved much further to the left. The Liberal leadership and many candidates avidly support a gay agenda and have voiced strong support for continued public funding of abortions.

Dalton McGuinty

McGuinty supports “abortion rights.” McGuinty, who calls himself a Catholic, told the Catholic Register newspaper that his faith informs all that he does in politics, but that on issues of morality, he checks his religion at the door of the legislature. Aggressively pushes full slate of homosexual rights and has come out strongly in favour of homosexual 'marriage'.

New Democratic Party

The New Democratic Party is traditionally hostile to life/family. The official party line is "The NDP support's women's access to safe, legal, publicly funded abortion." NDP consistently supports the homosexual agenda. The last NDP government severely limited peaceful pro-life activity around abortuaries with an injunction and then used the courts to punish those who broke the injunction. NDP pro-life candidates do exist but would have minimal impact if elected.

Howard Hampton

Has said little or nothing publicly about life or family issues. Devotion to feminists/gay lobby renders him incapable of publicly holding anything but a anti-family, anti-life platform.

Progressive Conservative Party

The PC Party feels abortion is a "matter of individual conscience" but strongly intimidates any caucus members who attempt to bring forward even the mildest changes to the status quo. When asked about funding of abortion, the party dishonestly adopts the stance that the Canada Health Act requires provincial governments to make abortion services available. 1995 election promise to fund counselling for women to consider alternatives to abortion has never materialized. The Tories, under former Premier Mike Harris, broke a 1995 campaign promise not to expand the number of freestanding abortuaries (there were five when he was elected and there are now six, despite the claims by some Tory candidates that the party has kept its promise on this issue). Also, 10 years after the NDP brought in a “temporary” injunction prohibiting pro-life activities within 10 metres of abortuaries, that violation of the free speech rights of pro-lifers continues unabated. Last year, the Ministry of Health also funded a pilot project studying whether to make the abortifacient “morning-after pill” available without a doctor’s prescription. The Party inner circle has been strongly opposed to conscience legislation to protect health care workers from being forced to take part in providing services to which they have serious conscientious objection. The Tories have advanced the gay agenda in Ontario much farther than any previous administrations including the NDP. 

See 1999 article

Ernie Eves

Very much a social liberal and proud of it. "I am a pragmatist," Eves said on entering the leadership race, "I am not an ideologue, I am not right wing, I am not left wing, I am someone who is fiscally responsible with a large social conscience."

Eves has no problem with abortion. As the Globe and Mail's John Ibbitson wrote on April 20, 2000, "Back in the 1980s, when the Liberals were in power, a back-bench MPP named Ernie Eves broke with his party to vote in support of publicly funded women's health centres, which performed abortions." On November 15, 2001, the National Post reported that "Eves ... attempted to make abortion a campaign issue, reminding voters that he broke with Conservative ranks to support a Liberal abortion-rights bill in the 1980s."

During the Progressive Conservative leadership campaign in 2002, Eves said he supported a “woman’s right to choose.” He did a complete flip-flop on the independent schools tax credit, saying nasty things about it during and after the Tory leadership, cancelling the credit and then recently re-implementing it.

See previous LifeSite article on Eves