MP’s remarks reveal Tories’ Christian voter crusade
On the Sunday before Canada Day, Conservative MP Wai Young spoke at Harvest City Church, a large evangelical house of worship in her riding of Vancouver South.
The church later posted her remarks online, where the left-wing Press Progress website found them and brought them to the attention of the Internet, which mocked them at length.
Young began by saying Prime Minister Stephen Harper “finds it a little troubling, I guess,” that he’s now one of the “senior statespeople” at international gatherings.
“Canada is blessed with a stable government,” she said, but bad journalism puts that at risk.
“I wanted to say to you that I do not read the newspapers anymore, because most of the facts in there are not factual,” she said. Too many journalists slant the truth, she said.
“Given that it’s so difficult to get real information nowadays, I just want to go back to people of faith, to just say that we’re here because we believe that Jesus served. He served but he acted as well.”
Kind of like the prime minister, in fact.
“I want to share with you about what I think our government is doing in this same vein,” she said. “Jesus served and acted to always do the right thing, not the most popular thing.”
That’s also how the Conservative government behaves, she said, and pointed to C-51, the anti-terror bill.
Young told the parishioners that if C-51 had been in place 30 years ago, the Air India bombing, which killed 329 people, wouldn’t have happened.
“That is because CSIS knew or heard there was a bomb aboard that plane, but because of the strict laws that government departments have, they cannot share information between departments,” she said.
“I don’t know if you guys know that. Because they couldn’t share information with the RCMP, the RCMP could not act to take that bomb off the plane.”
Young later admitted that she had her facts wrong. There was a public inquiry into the Air India bombing, and it didn’t find that CSIS knew about the bomb.
It is not the first time that Young has failed to inform herself about important facts concerning that terrorist attack.
During her race against Liberal incumbent Ujjal Dosanjh in 2011, she won the endorsement of Ripudaman Singh Malik, a businessman who was charged and acquitted in connection with the attack. (Young said she was unaware of his link.)
Young beat Dosanjh by just 3,900 votes.
The Conservatives are polling about 20 points lower in British Columbia than they were then, so this fall Young will need every vote she can get.
She and Harper are likely counting on the votes of the Harvest City Church congregation.
Harper appears to have been influ- enced by Karl Rove, the strategist behind George W. Bush. Rove put a lot of energy into motivating evangelicals, who are reliable conservative voters, if you can get them to the polling station.
Rove’s strategy — increase the turnout of reliable voters rather than building a broader coalition — seems to have influenced Harper, who doesn’t talk about this kind of thing, but can be observed handling issues important to evangelicals with great care and ignoring the concerns of people who won’t ever vote for him.
This fall, he will need those evangelical voters, which means making sure they vote.
One thing might make it a bit easier this fall.
The Conservatives have amended the Elections Act to allow for an advance poll to be held on a Sunday for the first time.
At noon on Thanksgiving Sunday, as services end in churches across Canada, polling stations will be opening — often right in the basement.