Thursday June 6, 2002
See today’s LifeSiteNews stories
Canadian Alliance Could Have Stopped Bill C-415
LifeSite responds to “corrections” from Alliance Justice Critic regarding LifeSite report
LifeSite Special Report
OTTAWA, June 6, 2002 (LSN.ca) – Yesterday LifeSite reported on the soft-glove treatment Svend Robinson’s Private Members’ Bill received by all parties in the House, including the ostensibly conservative Canadian Alliance. The Bill, C-415, expands the Criminal Code definition of identifiable groups relating to genocide and hate propaganda by including sexual orientation as an identifiable group.
Alliance MP Vic Toews, who, as the Justice Critic, is responsible for drafting the party’s response to this bill, challenged LifeSite on several points of fact. He (actually the letter was signed off by his legislative assistant) stressed that the Canadian Alliance is opposing the bill. That might be so, but pro-family groups have told LifeSite that this opposition is of little consequence if not backed up with strong action and compelling arguments, both of which seem lacking in the current Alliance strategy for the bill.
The letter from Mr. Toews’ office claims: “Firstly, the bill did not pass second reading unanimously. While there was no standing recorded vote, the vote was recorded ‘on division’, with Canadian Alliance members opposing the passage of the bill. … Furthermore, there is other no way (sic) procedurally to quash legislation at second reading other than the majority of the House being opposed to the bill during the vote.”
That statement is less than accurate. According to LifeSite sources, by the end of the first hour of debate, none of the parties put up any more speakers to debate the bill. When this happens, debate “collapses” and the vote is automatically called to move it to the next stage of debate.
Typically, when debate collapses on a bill, it is an indication of either a lack of interest in that particular piece of legislation or an intentional strategy to limit debate in order to expedite its progress. How Bill C-415, which attacks fundamental principles of justice and family values, can attract such little interest among Canadian Alliance MPs is astonishing to consider.
Regarding the vote, Mr. Toews’ office says the Alliance opposed the bill. The official Hansard record, however, shows no votes against the bill at second reading. (Where people vote for and against a motion, but the vote isn’t broken down, the Hansard will record it as follows: “Some hon. members: Agreed. Some hon. members: No.” For the second reading vote on Bill C-415, there is no record for “Some hon. members: No.”) Although the party officially opposes the bill, therefore, they didn’t take such a stand when it counted.
More significantly, however, is the nature of the vote. Since the debate collapsed, the vote that took place was the normal 2nd reading vote, not a special vote based on a motion put forward by Mr. Robinson as has been reported in some places. The House of Commons confirmed this matter of procedure to a LifeSite source. This means that the bill could have been defeated permanently by a majority vote.
Real Women vice-president Gwen Landolt has reported that there were only 15 Members of Parliament in the House at the time of the vote. It is hard to imagine that the Alliance couldn’t pull enough MPs into the House even at short notice to vote on a bill like this and defeat it.
Mrs. Landolt, however, also reported that Mr. Toews and CA Family critic Larry Spencer told REAL Women members that the party’s established strategy was to let the bill go to committee with the hope that they could amend it there. “It was made clear to us that this decision was a political decision so as to prevent the party from being attacked by the media (and the Liberals) for its ‘homophobic’ rejection of protection on the grounds of sexual orientation,” wrote Mrs. Landolt.
A far better approach to tackling the “hate crime” issue without specifically targeting homosexuals, say some conservatives, is to push for the elimination of the whole notion from the Criminal Code. Mr. Toews has raised some objections to that approach because it could be interpreted as supportive of freedom of expression for child pornographers. Nevertheless, it is hard to imagine conservatives pushing for more, rather than less, categories of people to be listed in “hate crime” legislation.
(LifeSite did inadvertently report yesterday that the CA did “nothing to
stop the bill from proceeding to second reading”. The report should have
read that they did “nothing to stop the bill from proceeding to committee
stage.”)
SHARE THIS STORY: E-mail Print Newsvine Digg Reddit Del.icio.us Facebook