An expedient politic?

Editorial

One of the first things that former U.S. President George W. Bush did upon assuming office was ban all foreign aid funding to agencies that perform abortions. While there has been no official sign that Canada is considering anything of the sort, Canada’s Liberal leader last week demanded that the Conservative government ensure that Canada’s foreign aid funding support developing world women’s access to reproductive choice.

The issue arose after Prime Minister Stephen Harper told the G8 summit that Canada’s foreign aid priorities would focus on mothers and children.

Of course, a cynic might say Harper’s announcement had something to do with the fight between the Liberals and Conservatives over Canada’s female voters. Effectively locked in a tie for public support over the past several years, the Conservatives and Liberals are doing everything they can to move their numbers.

But if Harper could be suspected of pandering to female voters, Michael Ignatieff proved he was no slouch either. Ignatieff’s statement surprised many observers, but there was nothing revolutionary in it. Since 1988, Canada has had no abortion laws, after the Supreme Court struck down the existing law and no majority could be found among MPs for any alternative bill. The Liberal party, which under Justice Minister Pierre Trudeau first decriminalized abortion in 1967, has been largely pro-choice (though with notable dissenters within its parliamentary ranks). The Conservative party has been the party of choice for most anti-abortion Canadians, though in the past two elections it has promised not to alter the abortion status quo.

What was surprising about Ignatieff’s statement, in other words, was not what he said, but that he said it at all. Most Canadians support access to abortion, but this remains a contentious and divisive topic – especially in the Conservative party. Like most Canadian politicians once in power, Harper has tacked to the political centre. In his case, compromises have come on lightning rod issues like abortion, same-sex marriage and capital punishment (to leave aside for now once-sacrosanct issues like balanced budgets). This has disappointed more than a few Conservatives, who have been convinced into silence only for pragmatic reasons.

Ignatieff has far less to lose by raising abortion than does Harper. While there is a vocal clump of anti-abortion Liberals, Harper is between a rock and a hard place on this issue. Given the conflict between public opinion polls (Canadians are for choice) and his party’s grassroots and backbenchers (not), it’s a no-win issue for Harper.

Ignatieff may be acting on the purely idealistic impulse that women worldwide deserve the rights to which Canadian women are entitled, just as Harper may be completely altruistic in citing mothers and children as his foreign aid priority. But politics is, after all, politics. Some degree of domestic political calculation went into both these positions. This reality has raised the accusation by Conservatives that Ignatieff is using abortion as a wedge issue with which to prod at the scabby ideological sores in the prime minister’s party. Of course, they don’t put it in exactly these terms.

Ironically, this is precisely what Liberals have accused Conservatives of doing on the issue of Canada’s support for Israel.

Liberal MP Irwin Cotler has said that Conservatives are trying to make support for Israel a wedge issue. In contrast with the Conservatives’ unapologetic defence of Israel’s right to exist and to defend its citizens, the Liberals’ irresolute attempts to walk both sides of this conflict have been among the most damaging contributors to the depiction of the Liberals as wishy-washy. (Harper, remember, defeated former Prime Minister Paul Martin, in part, by depicting him as “Mr. Dithers.”) Liberal leaders have a rough time being as definitive on Israel and the Palestinians because their party is even more divided on this matter than the Conservatives are on abortion.

Is it possible that Harper is being entirely true to his principles on Israel and Ignatieff is being entirely true to his on abortion? Anything is possible. More likely, both sides see a comfortable coalescence of principle and pragmatism. Why would Ignatieff not stand up for abortion rights, which his party largely supports? Why would Harper not stand up for Israel, when his party is overwhelmingly behind him on this? If both these positions have the happy consequence of disrupting the cohesion of their respective oppositions, isn’t this simply an agreeable, if unintended, consequence?

Both sides accuse the other of pandering. But isn’t the clear differentiation of party policy precisely what voters should cheer? If one party supports abortion rights and the other does not, let’s discuss. If one party defends a pluralist democracy’s right to defend its citizens from terrorism and the other is blasé, better the public know in the clearest terms. Neither party has anything to be particularly ashamed of for contrasting their principles with those of the opposing party. Indeed, this is exactly what healthy democratic politics is supposed to look like. Funny that Canadians don’t seem to recognize that.

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