OTTAWA, Ontario, February 3, 2017 (LifeSiteNews) – Saskatchewan MP Brad Trost cast the only no vote against a bill that would create a “Gender Equality Week” during the first week of October in Canada.
Fully 287 MPs voted for the bill at second reading, sending it for consideration to the Standing Committee on the Status of Women. Only Trost dissented.
“Some of my friends would have voted against it too if they had read it,” he told LifeSiteNews.
Trost did read Bill C-309 and said the preamble “falls into the category of politically correct gone amok.”
Trost objected to three aspects of the wordy preamble — and he believes many Canadians would object to them as well.
First was the labeling of women as an oppressed group and lumping them in with transgender persons claiming womanhood and other gender “identities.”
“Poverty and inequality,” the preamble declares, “disproportionately affect Canadian women, particularly elderly, disabled, transgender and visible minority women.”
Doubling down, the next “whereas” clause claims that whatever problems affect women, they are worse for “Canadians confronting issues related to gender identity and sexual orientation, particularly transgender women in visible minority groups.”
Trost, married with one daughter, says this approach undermines the traditional family, which he staunchly defends.
“There are only two genders, just hes and shes,” he told LifeSiteNews. To say differently in legislation or elsewhere “just denies reality and argues against the traditional family.”
Trost distinguishes himself from most of his competitors for the Conservative Party of Canada leadership by making his personal pro-life views part of his policy platform.
Trost’s second problem is with false facts. For example, the preamble complains that women face greater obstacles entering university than men.
“Women do not actually have a harder time getting into university in Canada than men,” Trost insisted. “It is just factually wrong. It is like fake news.” (Women surpassed men at university in 1991 and by 2006 comprised 60 percent of university enrollment).
His third objection was to “the overall tone” of the preamble and its litany of complaints against Canadian life.
“Canada has its problems and we’re not perfect by any stretch of the imagination,” Trost said, “but the whole sense of overall grievance and problem that was engendered by that whole long list I felt was an inaccurate portrayal of the situation between women and men in Canada today.”
The facts again bear Trost out. The 2015 Gallup World Poll of 73 countries found women economically worse off than men everywhere but measurably happier everywhere too.
REAL Women of Canada’s research shows Canadian women are reaching or exceeding parity with men in graduate and professional schools. The group called the bill “a testament to a politically correct list of feminist grievances and unsubstantiated demands based solely on ideology and not fact.”
“The Liberal government becomes more irrational each week,” REAL Women of Canada vice president Gwen Landolt said. “It is immersing itself in mindless politically correct policies bearing no resemblance to the real life of Canadians or their opinions.
“Unfortunately, the Conservative MP's (with one exception) appear to be joining the Liberals in this irrationality, buckling under pressure because of fear of criticism from the mainstream media. As a result, the Canadian population is being dragged into a quagmire of eccentric legislation.”
Trost added, “I’m pro-life. The biggest gender inequality in the country is the whole promotion of gender selection abortions. Those were not mentioned.”
The bill is the product of Liberal backbencher Sven Spengemann (Mississauga-Lakeshore). Trost expressed hope that it would be cleaned up enough in committee for him to vote for it, because he is a supporter of equality between the two genders.
“Conservatives,” he said, “deserve a leader who is prepared to stand up to the radical, loony left and fight for common sense conservative principles.”
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