News
Featured Image
 Martin Good / Shutterstock.com

Seven former Liberal MPs issued an open letter Thursday morning urging federal Liberal leader Justin Trudeau to renounce his “undemocratic” stance that candidates for the party must support his pro-abortion view.

Addressing Trudeau, they said he is asking candidates “to park their consciences at the entrance to the House of Commons and vote directly opposite to their fundamental beliefs, as directed by you.”

The letter was penned by Garnet Bloomfield, who represented London-Middlesex from 1980-1984; Murray Calder (Dufferin-Peel-Wellington-Grey, 1993-2004); Rex Crawford (Kent, 1988-1997), Pat O’Brien (London-Fanshawe, 1993-2006), John O’Reilly (Haliburton-Kawartha Lakes-Brock, 1993-2004) , Janko Peric (Cambridge, 1993-2004), and Tom Wappel (Scarborough Southwest, 1988-2008).

The former MPs said Trudeau’s stance reverses the party’s longstanding policy of allowing conscience votes, which it held during its dominance through the 20th century. They argue that the reversal will alienate voters who would otherwise support the party.

They also maintain that it “clearly discriminates against a select class of people,” and as such violates the spirit of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, which Trudeau has invoked to justify the policy.

“If your order is not rescinded, it will stand as a precedent for you, and future Liberal Leaders, to issue similar edicts on other moral issues,” they write. “If the Leader can ban people from running for the Party because they are opposed to abortion, then why not because they advocate euthanasia, or agree with human cloning, or are opposed to either or both these concepts? Where does one draw the line?”

Click “like” if you are PRO-LIFE!

“How can such a discriminatory policy serve the democratic ideals of our great nation?” they conclude.

Campaign Life Coalition praised the former Liberal MPs in a press release and encouraged others to follow their lead. They also urged all Liberal Party members to stop contributing financially to the party until Trudeau relents.

“All MPs who believe in democracy should be as outspoken as these former MPs, against any leader who dictates how they ought to speak and vote if they wish to join a particular party,” said Jim Hughes, national president of Campaign Life Coalition. “Trudeau claims the Liberal Party is the party of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms but, as is pointed out in the letter, Section 2 guarantees, ‘freedom of conscience’ which includes ‘freedom of thought, belief, opinion and expression.’ Nowhere in the charter is there a so-called ‘right’ to kill pre-born human beings. His late father, former Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau had assured us of that.”

“It is not just the MPs who should be concerned, but every voter in Canada, who should never accept the dictates of a would-be leader who demands that everyone conforms to his mistaken thought process,” said Mary Ellen Douglas, national organizer of Campaign Life Coalition.

Read the full letter here.