By John-Henry Westen
OTTAWA, October 3, 2006 (LifeSiteNews.com) – The Liberal Party of Canada has put out a “reality check” to Canadian media highlighting the appointment of former Focus on the Family Canada President Darrel Reid as Chief of Staff to Environment Minister Rona Ambrose. Liberal Leader Bill Graham called Reid’s appointment an “affront to our democracy.”
Following in the “scary” Christian theme, made famous in the Liberal Party attacks on former Canadian Alliance Leader Stockwell Day, the Party’s ‘reality check’ noted that “Reid was Canadian president of the U.S. based social conservative group Focus on the Family.”
Andre Fortin, the press secretary the office of Liberal Party Leader Bill Graham, told LifeSiteNews.com that “A number of positions Mr. Reid’s taken in the past he’s made comments about Quebec, about gays and lesbians, about the Muslim world, all these things we’re concerned about.”
One of Reid’s quotes the Liberal Party highlighted in the list of quotes referred to by Fortin of concern to the Liberal Party was the following: “Only God can make Canada a truly Christian country… Christians are called to be faithful where God places them. We are called to speak biblical truth to seek justice – and that obviously has implications for our political life.”
Asked what was objectionable about the quote Fortin evaded the question. He said: “We just decided to highlight the quote made by Mr Reid and it’ll be up to Canadians to see if they think this person is fit to work in a minister’s office in one of the highest positions in our government all these quotes will be object-able (sic), or will be objected by some Canadians, and we just wanted to put them out there and let the Canadian people make their own decisions about it.”
Former Liberal MP Pat O’Brien who quit the Party after the Leadership forced homosexual ‘marriage’ on Canadians without proper debate or a free vote was not surprised by the development.ÂÂ
“As far as I’m concerned the Liberal Party lost all credibility long ago with regard to guarding morals, so it’s no surprise to me that they are taking umbrage at someone standing up for Christian values in society,” O’Brien told LifeSiteNews.com.“They continue to erode those values. I think that is one reason why the Liberal Party have and will continue to lose support from traditional Liberal voters.”
The Liberal’s objected to this quote by Reid about what Fortin called “the Muslim world”: “It is about high time that Muslims the world over show the world that theirs is a religion of peace, rather than a religion based on threats, intimidation and terrorism.”
The Liberal’s also objected to a quote by Reid opposing the homosexual hate crime bill which the Catholic Bishops of Canada warned would lead to attacks on religious freedom. Liberal MP Tom Wappel had condemned the same legislation as “a terribly dangerous piece of legislation” and many other Liberal MPs joined in fighting the bill.
On that bill, Reid commented: “This isn’t the first time in human history where tyranny has been imposed on people, you know it happened in Germany in the ‘30’s, and frankly I see some real parallels there, because you know Adolf Hitler and his bunch really didn’t care ultimately what you thought personally, but they really cared about what you said, because that became dangerous, and therefore when people spoke up about things like freedom or spoke up about their religious values, that was when the power of the state started coming down.”