Anti-abortion group stumps for Tories

Coalition looks to run members as Conservative candidates in Ottawa

A national anti-abortion group is helping sell memberships in the Conservative Party of Canada in the hopes of nominating pro-life candidates for the 2015 federal election.

Toronto-based Campaign Life Coalition has recently been calling past donors on its mailing list in the Ottawa area to encourage them to buy the $15 memberships and vote in Conservative nomination contests.

Campaign Life chairman Jeff Gunnerson says the group has found two supporters who are willing to run on a pro-life slate in yetto-be-determined Ottawa ridings, even if it means trying to knock out a sitting MP.

“Our core mandate is about electing or trying to elect prolife or pro-family candidates into office.”

He said his coalition would support pro-life candidates from any party, save for the NDP, but wants people in Ottawa to get behind these two Conservatives.

Gunnerson wouldn’t provide the names of the prospective candidates, as they have yet to confirm they’ll run in 2015.

“We’re priming the pump so if and when they do register to become candidates, at least we’ll have people at the ready to help them out.”

To the dismay of pro-lifers, Prime Minister Stephen Harper has said he has no intention of reopening the abortion debate.

He is not likely to sign nomination papers of any candidate elected via a pro-life drive in the riding association and is unlikely to abide a nomination challenge against an MP who is already in the House of Commons.

But Campaign Life may have an eye on the ongoing Senate expense scandal that has swamped the Prime Minister’s Office and raised questions about whether Harper will continue to the lead the party into the next election.

‘The good thing is (Stephen Harper) won’t be leader forever. We still have to work for that day.’

JEFF GUNNERSON Campaign Life chairman

“The good thing is he won’t be leader forever,” Gunnerson said. “We still have to work for that day.”

The group is not reticent about supporting candidates who will challenge sitting Conservative MPs.

“We’ll take on anybody who is against our cause. If we have what we call a ‘pro-abort’ MP, sure, we’d love to run candidates against them,” Gunnerson said.

The calls are being made through a phone tree of Campaign Life supporters or by volunteers working at a phone bank in Toronto, Gunnerson said. When they reach supporters willing to buy party memberships, the volunteers guide them through the online sign-up process.

“We sit there with them and talk them through it,” Gunnerson said. “With the older folks who don’t have Internet access or don’t want to, we send them a form through the mail.”

The calls encouraging membership purchases come at a time when all parties are weighing the right of their leaders to quash nominations of candidates they don’t like. Conservative MP Michael Chong has introduced a private member’s bill that would dilute the powers of leaders by stripping the requirement for them to sign candidates’ nomination papers.

Anti-abortion groups have successfully wielded their membership lists to help pro-lifers win nomination battles, most notably in the Liberal Party in the 1990s, when the party elected a contingent of pro-life MPs, including Tom Wappel, Dan McTeague and Paul Szabo.

Liberal Leader Justin Trudeau has committed to allowing open nominations of candidates, subject to one caveat — contestants for a nomination must first pass through a yet unspecified “green light” review developed by the party’s National Election Readiness Committee.

“These are questions we are looking at and struggling with,” Trudeau said Wednesday.

It is unclear if the green-light process will include a commitment to support the party’s pro-choice stance on abortion.

Trudeau said the criteria would be made public when they are finalized early next year. Nominations for Liberal candidates won’t begin until after the Liberal national convention in February.

Gunnerson would not say where in the Ottawa area his chosen candidates might run.

Of Ottawa’s seven seats, four are held by Conservatives, including Ottawa West-Nepean MP and Foreign Minister John Baird, who skews progressive on social issues.

A new riding in the southwest of the city will be in place next year, after the Conservative-held NepeanCarleton was split up to account for the increasing population in Barrhaven.