VANCOUVER, May 9, 2001 (LSN.ca) – Gordon Gibson, one-time provincial Liberal leader in British Columbia, has called on the Canadian Alliance to abandon its deeply held views on grassroots process and shut down pro-life members of the party. In a column in today’s National Post, Gibson says that “Stockwell Day’s winning margin as leader of the Alliance was provided by pro-lifers” and says that in a leadership battle “pro-life might sustain Mr. Day in as leader.” However, Gibson pontificates that this is the death knell for the Alliance and thus urges the party to “go outside its own constitutional provisions” and have “a caucus coup . . . ousting Mr. Day.”
Gibson claims the “right political answer” on the abortion question is “no change in the law” and that the result of the party’s failure to take this approach (current law allows even partial-birth abortion in Canada) “was a huge failure to gain seats.” An objective look at the recent election statistics indicate the opposite of Gibson’s musings. The West, which saw a vast majority of Alliance candidates elected, ran a strong majority (at least 68%) of pro-life Alliance candidates. In the East, and especially Ontario – where the Alliance won only two seats – only 42% of Alliance candidates were pro-life and even then they were generally less open about their pro-life views than the western candidates. The only two wins which the Alliance did pick up in Ontario were pro-life candidates who were up-front about their pro-life views.
Gibson makes an example of his own riding of Vancouver Quadra, where he claims “the (abortion) question was on every woman’s lips, and the answer at the end of her pencil on voting day.” However, the Alliance had no chance in the strongly Liberal leaning riding. Moreover, the Alliance candidate that ran in the riding was pro-abortion.
John Hof, President of Campaign Life Coalition BC noted that following Gibson’s advice one should ask “who will be the next group excluded from the political process?”
See Gibson’s column in the National Post at: https://www.nationalpost.com/search/story.html?f=/stories/20010509/557252.html