Smelling political gain, Liberals slow bubble zone legislation

Women in Ontario seeking abortions don’t need to be protected from harassment and intimidation until the Liberal party can extract maximum political advantage from talking about it, the governing party has decided.

Not even a day after Attorney General Yasir Naqvi introduced a bill to forbid protests around abortion clinics, because the abuse of women seeking a legal health-care treatment has gone on long enough, he rejected an offer from the Progressive Conservatives to make his bill the law of the land by lunchtime.

Tory leader Patrick Brown is pro-choice and supports protecting women who are getting abortions, he said, so let’s get this done. Nepean-Carleton Tory MPP Lisa MacLeod brought a motion. If the legislature is unanimous, it can do almost anything it wants as fast as it wants. The government might have whipped the bill through a vote, slapped it down in front of the lieutenantgovernor and been done with it.

Whoa, whoa, whoa, the Liberals said. Let’s talk about this first. Let’s talk about this a lot.

“We are encouraged by the change of heart from the PC caucus and their new-found support of a woman’s right to choose,” Naqvi’s press secretary Kyle Richardson wrote in a mass email Thursday.

“However, the bill was only introduced yesterday and while we will advocate for swift passage, we believe that health-care professionals, women’s groups and other advocates should have the opportunity to review the bill and provide input to strengthen the bill during the committee process.”

These would be the people Naqvi had thanked Wednesday for all the help they’d given in drafting up the superb bill he presented.

“I want to thank the advocates,” he’d said. “They worked with us in the summer, very hard. We’ve had many, many conversations to get this right.”

Catherine Macnab, the executive director of Planned Parenthood Ottawa, said Thursday she’s really happy with the bill as written.

She has some questions about how it will establish bubble zones without publicizing every place where abortions are performed, and she hesitated to say anything about what might happen to the law in the unfamiliar Queen’s Park committee process. But overall, well, “if it could be turned into law today, I’d be thrilled.”

Yasir Naqvi is the attorney general, the Ottawa Centre MPP and, as it happens, the government house leader, responsible for shepherding government bills through Queen’s Park. This is a truly cosmic confluence of responsibilities: It is his job in three separate ways to get this law passed.

He’d summoned up angry tears the day before, recounting the story of a woman who was spat on outside The Morgentaler Clinic on Bank Street. For a moment, he could barely speak.

“That is our No. 1 job, is to protect people. To protect people’s rights. That’s my No. 1 job as the attorney general, and there’s nothing more important to (me), to our premier and our government, (than) to protect women’s right to choose,” he said.

This, he said, is why he got into politics in the first place. It’s not just about women seeking abortions, either — it’s about healthcare workers and their families, it’s about people going to health facilities that provide other services, having to run gauntlets of placards just to get checkups or birth control or something.

But let’s put that aside while we make the Tories squirm. Seven minutes after Richardson explained why the bubble-zone bill couldn’t be hurried, the Liberal party emitted a separate news release saying Brown had, in the Liberals’ words, “clearly implied it was unimportant” (the bill he offered to rush and, again, that the Liberals had slowed down) and then talking about his pro-life record as a federal Conservative legislator.

The Tories have a handful of socially conservative MPPs (Niagara’s Sam Oosterhoff talked Wednesday about the nearelimination of Down syndrome in Iceland through abortion, in a brief statement the Liberals made sure to forward to the Queen’s Park press gallery) and the longer this discussion goes on, the more chances they’ll have to talk like social conservatives and become campaign ads for Liberals trying to hoover up social-liberal votes.

Beyond the Tory caucus, the party has a whole wing of supporters that isn’t thrilled by Brown’s stances on gay rights, the sex-education curriculum for schools and now abortion. Some have been strong-armed out of party nominations; some have splintered off to new little parties; some have remained but are undermining Brown’s leadership.

Talking about abortion does not make Brown’s life easier; if the Tories aren’t going to oppose Naqvi’s bill, it’s in Brown’s political interest to get it off the agenda fast. The Tories, however, aren’t the ones parading their principles like Caesar returning from Gaul.

Every now and then, politicians clutch their hearts and wonder why, oh why, don’t people care about politics? Why don’t they get involved? Why do they distrust us?

Because of repulsive amorality like this.

If the Tories aren’t going to oppose Naqvi’s bill, it’s in Brown’s political interest to get it off the agenda fast.