Trudeau showing leadership with summer jobs funding change
LETTERS
I am compelled to respond to the editorial “Gov’t taking politics where it doesn’t belong.”
I disagree. Although ostensibly about conditional funding for the summer jobs program, this issue is multi-layered and absolutely rife with politics, reflecting the core principles of both the Liberal and Conservative parties.
The latter’s view (and that of the writer of the editorial, it seems) is that the conditions imposed are irritatingly prescriptive and therefore an impediment to the all-important economy. But because of the accompanying dismissive attitude toward the core issue, the reproductive rights of women, the economy looks more like a Trojan horse for that old “hidden agenda” of the Reform conservatives — the advancement of religious doctrine in public life.
Oddly, in spite of the rarefied air of religion’s magical thinking, most still feel a requirement to at least pretend to respect the various “views” and “opinions” it generates, even when they are actually arbitrary, rigid dictates. But all that sails right over the top of what it actually means to be “pro-life” or “antiabortion,” not to mention what it would look like to enforce that. It is a flagrant and utterly nullifying dismissal of women as bona fide human beings deserving the basic right to control what happens in their own bodies. Only in the bizarro world of religion could such an outrageous disconnect occur, and so casually. And yet the government is being accused of overstepping!
For the Liberals this is about the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, so they have insisted on placing human rights above mere religious “rights” which simply afford the right to believe in whatever deity you wish. Period. Trudeau has shown leadership by declining to fund groups whose ultimate aim is to legislate against the most basic human right of all and in so doing has pulled us all back down to earth, where we actually live. He has also shown why liberals are more suited to be the natural governing party of any modern, democratic country — because adaptability is the key to co-existence and because we are all human but not all religious. And half of us will always be women.
Coincidentally, the “me-too” movement is swelling in importance while the relevance of religious doctrine shrinks. Since these same doctrines can rightly be held responsible for institutionalizing patriarchy in society, along with its corollary, misogyny, this is poetic justice. We need more of it.
Patricia Pargeter
Lethbridge