Liberals show contempt for Parliament

Which is worse about the Liberals’ high-handed imposition of an unwilling chair on the House of Commons Status of Women committee? The contempt for Parliament or the contempt for truth? I’m going with contempt for truth. Once you have that, everything else falls out of place pretty reliably.

It may be a bit of a “K1A” issue, obsessing commentators and the political class while normal people go about their lives. But arrogant dishonesty in government doesn’t go away if you ignore it. So let’s talk about truth.

It has lately become a key element of virtue-signalling to deplore Donald Trump as a “post-truth” president. But he did not arise in a vacuum.

A culture respectful of truth-telling across various partisan divides, intellectual and political, would have rejected his indifference to facts as abhorrent and bizarre. But Democrats proud of the Clintons were in no position to express credible outrage at Trump. And it’s not just American politicians.

As several of my colleagues have pointed out, those denouncing Rachael Harder’s pro-life position as at odds with the views of Canadian women or the Supreme Court’s 1988 abortion ruling are themselves either lying or recklessly indifferent to truth. The Supreme Court in 1988 did not say any limits on abortion would be unconstitutional. It spelled out conditions for increasing restrictions through a pregnancy that it would permit. Politicians who have used “The Court made me do it” as an excuse for inaction on abortion, from timidity or expedience, have been engaged in corrosive deceit for decades.

Likewise, pollsters have repeatedly studied Canadian women’s view of the status quo in which Canada is the only democratic country with no restrictions on abortion, and pundits have commented extensively on their findings. So whatever one’s own view, and mine is firmly pro-life, there is no excuse for ignorance or pretence here. A majority of Canadian women, rightly or wrongly, consistently favour legal abortion — but with some restrictions, especially late in a pregnancy.

Liberal MP and Status of Women vice-chair Pam Damoff, who led the Sept. 26 Liberal-NDP walkout to prevent Harder becoming chair, has said her “voting record is opposed to where women stand,” and “the spokesperson for Canadian women should be someone who is representative of the Supreme Court decision that was made in 1988.” And her colleagues and righteous opinion have not repudiated her, not even her bizarre description of the chair of this obscure committee as “the spokesperson for Canadian women,” as if they could not speak for themselves.

In saying all this let me not lose sight of the contempt for Parliament. As recently as their first Throne Speech the Liberals promised to respect the freedom of individual MPs, as opposition parties tend to, especially if they’ve given no real thought to growing problem of executive dominance of the legislature. Then they gain executive power, spin contemptuously about and say who are these idiot ankle-biting legislators?

I do not deny MPs’ right to decide who chairs committees, serves as speaker and so forth. The House must be master of its own affairs. But to maintain their operational independence from an overbearing executive, MPs ought to consider themselves legislators first, the only part of the vast machinery of government directly answerable to voters. Which makes collegiality essential on organizational matters.

To be sure, an MP who was, say, a Holocaust denier would be an unsuitable committee chair. But one hopes and trusts that their colleagues would not nominate such a person, or indeed tolerate them in their caucus or even the House. And Harder’s views are not remotely comparable to Holocaust denial.

If legislators behave like members of a red, blue or orange team in a no-holdsbarred scrum for the prize of executive power, they become mere and often mindless pawns. Like NDP MPs howling when Justin Trudeau sought to dictate which of them would sit on the new national security and intelligence committee, not even a committee of Parliament, then their Status of Women member joined the Harder walkout.

One very weird aspect of this story is that Liberal and NDP MPs somehow forced the chairpersonship on prochoice Conservative MP Karen Vecchio, who claims not to want it. Despite my call for collegiality I think she should refuse to perform the job and bring the committee to a halt until her colleagues back down.

Public affairs in Canada increasingly remind me of William F. Buckley Jr.’s quip, “Liberals claim to want to give a hearing to other views, but then are shocked and offended to discover that there are other views.” Nowadays they are also belligerent and dishonest, including the PM, a smiling avatar of a new “inclusiveness” proudly intolerant on gender, that defines “diversity” as everyone thinking alike.

It is this contempt for truth from which all the other ills flow.

LET ME NOT LOSE SIGHT OF THE CONTEMPT FOR PARLIAMENT. — JOHN ROBSON