TORONTO, June 28, 2005 (LifeSiteNews.com) – With the battle over Canada’s Same-sex Marriage bill C-38 coming to an end LifeSiteNews.com interviewed Jim Hughes, president of the Canadian national pro-life organization, Campaign Life Coalition (CLC) and vice-president of International Right to Life. Hughes has been extremely active in the life and family struggles for over 25 years.

CLC has been heavily involved in the politicalÂbattle against the Liberal government’s marriage redefinitionÂbill. The organization has used its large membership base, network of activists around the country, its various publications and its Ottawa lobby office to generate much of the massive response that Members of Parliament have received to the bill. Also, under Jim Hughes’ guidance CLC became one of the very few pro-life organizations in the world that first realized the need to lobby for life and family at the United Nations. It has sent many delegates to UN conferences and helped other organizations to also get involved at the world body.

LifeSiteNews Question: Campaign Life Coalition is a pro-life organization and is involved in this effort to defend marriage. What’s the connection?

Hughes: Well, the family is the cornerstone of society and as the family goes, so goes society. If you lose one of the major underpinnings of the family, that is, a husband and a wife and children, we’re going to be in a terrible shape as a country and as a society. It’s absolutely essential that we lock horns with the people who are pushing their own agendas as we have done with some NGOs at the United Nations.

I think it’s in large part because of the experience that we have had at the UN as an NGO that has solidified our position in terms of getting involved here in Canada. We realize that we are a life and family organization and that we have to step up to the plate and do as much as we can in order to defeat the evil and to promote the good.

LifeSiteNews: I gather you are saying, from the United Nations you have learned there is a connection between those who are fighting for abortion and fighting against the family.

Hughes: Most of the forces in favor of abortion are also in favor of so-called same-sex marriages, they’re in favor of lessening responsibility for the children on the part of the family and a growing interference by the state in the raising of children. Their talk about abortion as an international human right is frightening and it certainly flies in the face of what we know about the after effects of abortion on women and on society in general.

LifeSiteNews: What should be the response to those Members of Parliament who voted for Bill C-38 on second reading and who will vote for it on third and final reading?

Hughes: I would say to those MPs, you have let down Canadian society. You’ve taken us further down the slippery slope and you’ve opened up the possibilities of people marrying their siblings, their children. You’ve opened the doors to polygamy. You’ve now taken away from children in school their innocence by now forcing the teaching of anal and oral sex in the classrooms. You are an embarrassment to the country.

LifeSiteNews: What would pro-life, pro-family organizations be encouraging Canadians to do about those MPs?

Hughes: Well, Campaign Life Coalition has the responsibility of telling the public where each Member of Parliament stands on the crucial issues and some of the public won’t like what we report. Many will object because of their lock-step allegiance to their particular parties instead of their allegiance to what they probably deep down know that God instead wants or, put another way, what is right and what is wrong. Still, it’s our obligation to tell the public about their MPs’ stands and to strongly encourage actions to defeat in the next election those who voted for same-sex marriage. And I would expect that if candidates running for the other parties take a stronger pro-life and pro-family stance, even it the incumbent MPs were against abortion and euthanasia, that the MPs would still run the risk of losing their support to those other candidates who have a solid position on all of the issues.

LifeSiteNews: Should every MP who votes against C-38 be supported by pro-life, pro-family Canadians in the next election?

Hughes: No, because you are going to have in there some members who are pro-abortion and pro-euthanasia but they’re opposed to changing the definition of marriage. However, a lot of people are going to examine the candidates in their ridings and I would expect that many of the MPs who voted in support of traditional marriage will receive a lot of support at the ballot box.

LifeSiteNews: In your opinion, how did Canada come to this situation of abortion on demand and now almost inevitable same-sex marriage?

Hughes:Â I think it’s because there has been very little and very weak spiritual leadership and very little spiritual formation on the major issues of the day. The churches and other faith institutions and places of worship have turned a blind eye and haven’t addressed the major issues of the day and have been more concerned, just as the general electorate is, about the bottom line, making sure that the church financial situation is healthy. And, of course, it’s a always a prudential thing to be concerned about expenditures, etc., but many times pastors have told me that their boards, their parish councils, etc. were not so much concerned about their outspokenness on these crucial issues when the church financial situation was very healthy. If the parish financial situation wasn’t healthy, however, and the pastors were speaking out strongly, forcefully, in defense of life and family, they were quickly censored by their boards.

LifeSiteNews: It’s astonishing that Prime Ministers Trudeau, Turner, Mulroney, Clark, Chretien and now Martin, all Catholics and most from Quebec, have all, in varying degrees, supported the these radical social changes. How do you account for this?

Hughes:Â Well, I cannot account for it. I hear people saying that the problems occurred on the Catholic side after Vatican II, but in reality the problems occurred and were created by people, such as those prime ministers, who attended Latin Mass, people who were brought up on the Baltimore Catechism learning the truths of the faith by rote. Those are the people who were the architects of all of this stuff. They’ve rejected their faith and have lived like devout pagans, as some have described this behaviour. I guess they just didn’t understand their faith or didn’t believe it and they ushered in what is known as cafeteria Catholicism and so that’s part of the main problem.

We were told by many people in the Church not to judge, “don’t judge others”. This crept into the school system and instead of having young people trained on what is right and what is wrong, the emphasis became what feels good and in your own conscience, “what do you think is right”?

That all goes back to Winnipegitis, that is, the Winnipeg Statement of 1968, with the Canadian Catholic bishops failing to support the papal encyclical Humanae Vitae, Pope Paul VI’s encyclical on human life. All of the decisions since then, in large part, can be traced back to a loss of faith. There are no objective standards of morality. It’s all how you feel. Every one of these prime ministers have reflected those changes.

As well, we are constantly seeing mainline churches running to protect their charitable tax status and avoiding the crucial issues because they might offend members of their congregations and might affect their ability to raise funds for their extended programs.

LifeSiteNews:Â Why is Canada such a leading social radical activist nation both within Canada and at the UN and other international bodies?

Hughes: IÂthink we went along on the coat tails of the United States during the Clinton years especially and then when Clinton was defeated the strategy became for Canada to carry the ball. Why are they doing this? I think a lot of it comes from the loss of faith in the province of Quebec, where the French culture is not being maintained and will eventually die out because there are so few births there and they cannot maintain their population without massive doses of immigration. At the same time, the majority of children who are born in that province are born to couples who are not married and so it creates a demographic mess.

LifeSiteNews: Are you implying thatÂhas influenced federal government policiesÂbecause Quebecers are so dominant in Ottawa?

Hughes: Yes, when you consider how many Quebec seats there are in House of Commons, right off the bat, any government’s got to look to that province and attempt to win over their support for whatever programs they want to initiate. And so, the Quebecers with no faith, loss of their root faith, strong rejection of traditional principles, they’re a large part of the problem.

LifeSiteNews: Related to the work that you do, what do you think Canadians are especially not aware of?

Hughes: They’re not aware of their loss of democratic rights. They’re not aware that the Canadian government has virtually given to its delegates to the UN permission to give away our sovereignty and I expect in years to come weÂwill see that in greater form, but at the moment most of the people are asleep on it.

However, there is some awareness of the problems. People have come to distrust the institutions. They don’t have a lot of confidence in their judicial system at all. The people that are new to the country traditionally feel an overwhelming allegiance to the government in power that allowed them in. That of course has created terrible imbalance. However, as we go along, more and more of those people from the various cultures and religions see that the Liberals under Martin are no different, perhaps even worse than the Liberals under Jean Chretien. Many of them are re-thinking their support for the federal Liberals. Unfortunately as well, people have come to distrust the clergy because of the many abuses that we’ve seen and read about over the past number of years.

LifeSiteNews: What have you found to be the biggest obstacles to achieving your organization’s objectives?

Hughes: I would say lack of spiritual leadership is way up there, which, if it had been given, would have allowed us to do much more within the political realm. Instead we have found ourselves fighting the battles that should have been fought strongly by the faith communities and we found ourselves out there having to do that because the response from the various faith communities has been so weak – vacillating, not consistent. That’s probably been one of the most difficult things to live with.

When I joined the pro-life movement I expected the Christian churches would be in the forefront of this battle against the killing of the unborn but instead I’ve found we’ve had to drag them kicking and screaming to the positions that they should take in all these different issues. That has been most disconcerting.

The refusal of the churches to inform their congregants or parishioners where the political candidates stand and that sort of thing has been really disconcerting.

However, we acknowledge and are always grateful for those courageous, faithful individual pastors and priests across the country who have stood up for years while there has been a leadership vacuum at the top of their particular church denominations. We are all beholden to these men of principle and belief.

The almost slavish allegiance to their political parties by many people of faith has been another most disturbing obstacle. That allegiance has over the years proven to be a higher priority for large numbers of Canadians than their religious faith and their religious teachings or principles.

Another big problem has been the media lying to the people or giving half-truths, etc. 25 years ago, one of the major U.S. networks appearing before one of the U.S. Senate subcommittee hearings stated, “we’re not here to report the truth we’re here to create news”, that is, not to report the news, but create it. So that’s been an eye opener.

LifeSiteNews: How has Campaign Life Coalition managed to keep going all these years against what seem to often be such overwhelming odds?

Hughes: Lots of prayer. Lots of prayer out there for the efforts of Campaign Life Coalition. Lots of prayer by Campaign Life Coalition supporters all over the place and by a solid prayer base amongst most of the activists, regardless of which faith community they come from. I think that’s probably the major reason. They believe they’re doing God’s work and as a result of that nothing can stop them except old age and death.

LifeSiteNews: What would you most like to tell our international readers about the struggle for life and family?

Hughes: That we’re not giving up here. That our shoulders are down and we’re still going as hard and as fast as we can, just as the people that came before us to this country and made all kinds of sacrifices to ensure that this democracy would flourish – the same people that sacrificed their lives in order to protect the vulnerable and the weak. And, the pro-life movement is the most peaceful movement that I’ve ever heard of and it’s also the movement that’s got more of that attitude that says this is God’s work and therefore nothing’s going to stop us.

SJ