Debate critical to democracy

It is a common complaint in modern democracies that politicians do not take clear stands on controversial issues, and that power trumps principle in political parties.

Isn’t it odd, therefore, how upset people get when a leader does takes an unequivocal position, insists his party offer candidates who agree with it, and thus guarantees that citizens have people to vote for who will reflect and honour their deeply held wishes? It’s possible that Justin Trudeau has made an electoral mistake in his insistence that standard-bearers for the Liberal Party of Canada accept a woman’s right to choose an abortion.

But he has not sinned against democracy. Toronto’s Catholic Archbishop Thomas Collins is wrong when he complains that Mr. Trudeau has overstepped the proper limits of political authority by intruding on matters of “conscience and religious faith.”

Mr. Trudeau didn’t say no one should advocate for new laws restricting a woman’s right to end her pregnancy. He has merely said that such individuals offer their arguments under another banner. Far from promoting a world in which, to quote Cardinal Collins, “only certain approved political views are accepted,” Mr. Trudeau has done precisely the opposite.

Because the issue is divisive, conventional wisdom in this country has been in recent years to keep it off the public agenda — to the intense frustration of those who want today’s laissez-faire approach to the issue rolled back by such means as a 2012 effort to seek a Supreme Court of Canada ruling on when human life legally begins.

Since everyone in the country seemed to be discussing the Trudeau-Collins disagreement last week, it would appear the Liberal leader is actually guilty of violating the code of silence.

And, it must be pointed out, he is doing so on behalf of rights that flow from the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, as determined by the highest court in the land in its famous 1988 rejection of former abortion laws. Cardinal Collins, however, has come to the defence of those who would erode the Charter as currently interpreted. By so doing, he is actually giving comfort to those who seek more power to define law on matters of morality, not less.

Does the foregoing mean that it is Cardinal Collins himself, rather than Mr. Trudeau, who has offended democratic propriety — by entering a political debate in his capacity as the religious leader? Absolutely not. Mr. Trudeau’s decision touches upon a matter in which the Roman Catholic Church and many of its members have strong, sincere opinions. It would betray the archbishop’s duty as a church and community leader, and his obligations to his conscience, if he did not speak out.

It is precisely through debates such as the one he and Mr. Trudeau have provoked — the latest in a long line of debates and controversies on this issue — that a new grassroots consensus on difficult moral issues takes shape.

Not so long ago, “freedom to choose” was the embattled minority position in big-tent political parties. Today, astonishingly, it is the acceptability of holding and promoting antiabortion views.

(Edmonton Journal) The editorials that appear in this space represent the opinion of The StarPhoenix. They are unsigned because they do not necessarily represent the personal views of the writers. The positions taken in the editorials are arrived at through discussion among the members of the newspaper’s editorial board, which operates independently from the news departments of the paper.