Opinion
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OTTAWA, June 23, 2015 (LifeSiteNews) — When Canada’s elected parliamentarians gave overwhelming support to their own right to vote on matters of conscience free of party wishes — by a 273-1 margin — it raised two questions. Why was it even necessary, and who voted against it?

The motion itself read simply, “That, in the opinion of the House, all Members of Parliament should be allowed to vote freely on all matters of conscience.”

The answer to the second question, who voted against it, is Government whip Gordon O’Connor, and that may help answer why the motion was necessary. As whip, O’Connor bears the burden of enforcing Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s desire that the abortion issue shall never be allowed to attach itself to his government, despite the presence of 60-70 pro-life MPs in his Conservative caucus. In a particularly egregious case two years ago, the Tories helped the other parties keep a motion condemning sex-selection abortion from ever being voted on.

“That does look like a violation of freedom of conscience,” the motion’s mover, Saskatchewan Conservative MP Ed Komarnicki, told LifeSiteNews on Monday, a little grudgingly. His direct target in bringing the motion was not his own boss, he made clear, but Liberal Leader Justin Trudeau.

Trudeau notoriously has ordered that all Liberal MPs elected in the coming October elections must vote for abortion whenever it comes up. Yet Trudeau was unblushingly among the 273 in favor of MPs’ freedom of conscience.

“He’s being a little bit hypocritical,” Komarnicki understated. “I guess he thought it was better during an election year to appear to support it than to be consistent.”

Some MPs pretended in debate that the meaning of freedom of conscience was itself inconsistent. One opposition MP wondered if it could be equated with beauty, while another suggested it could apply to climate change. But Komarnicki, a staunch pro-lifer, made it clear in debate what both he and several Supreme Court justices meant by it.

“I can, however, say with a great deal of confidence that matters relating to life, more particularly to the termination of life at any time from the point of conception to the point of natural death, would easily fall within that definition,” he told the House.

“Whether or not to terminate before death naturally occurs, or to terminate a life before it fully becomes a living being or while it has the potential to be a living being is certainly a matter of conscience, as may be a number of other matters falling somewhere between these two.”

Komarnicki cited the Supreme Court’s Morgentaler decision that left Canada with a legal vacuum on abortion in 1988, and the Carter decision late last year which did the same to doctor-assisted suicide. In both rulings, the judges called on legislators to make laws protecting the freedom of doctors whose conscience forbade them from performing either fatal actions.

In debate Komarnicki explained why his motion was made necessary by Trudeau’s edict. “In my view, the actions of the Liberal leader, the member for Papineau, are indefensible. Either one believes in the charter or one does not. His edict violates the charter without the use of the notwithstanding clause and strikes at the heart of this motion, and indeed at the heart of the charter,” a reference to the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. He noted that several former Liberal MPs, all pro-life, had gone public in their criticism.

But in his interview with LifeSiteNews, Komarnicki admitted that his fellow Conservative MPs and probably the government had collaborated to keep MP Mark Warawa’s motion condemning sex-selection abortion from ever being voted on.

Andre Schutten of the Association for Reformed Political Action noted, “The party leaders were too cowardly to ever let it see the light of day.”

But Schutten nonetheless applauded the passage of Komarnicki’s motion because, “It is something we can use to hold the leader’s feet to the fire with. It is a pretty authoritative statement.”

Schutten said that Prime Minister Stephen Harper, though always clear his government would never bring up abortion, had allowed caucus members to bring it up and to vote freely when it did come up. Neither the Liberals nor the NDP had done the same.

Johanne Brownrigg, Campaign Life Coalition’s Ottawa lobbyist, was present for the vote in the House of Commons. “It was a rather cynical display when the NDP and the Liberals all stood in favor of the motion,” she said. “Sadly Justin Trudeau claims to want democratic reform but his position on prolife candidates betrays his document. He doesn't appreciate the principles of democracy.”

“This has not been an easy Parliament for any pro-life MPs who have had the courage of their convictions,” she added. “The motion itself, from a retiring prolife MP is evidence to a weakened Parliament.”