Time Immortal

It’s all over but leadership race(s).

The final total gave the Conservative Party of Canada a tough-nut-to-crack minority with 143 seats, nearly double what the Liberal Party of Canada managed to win (only a mere 77 seats). Not quite the result my wife and I were hoping for, but not bad either. If nothing else, it would seem to be a vote of confidence on the part of the Canadian people — confidence in the Conservative Party’s plan for the country, in the direction they’ve led it in, and in the man at the helm. That’s the lowest level of popular support that the Liberals have had since…uhm…the formation of Canada, actually. That’s not something that Stephane Dion can survive, I would suspect…although it would seem that Dion expects to stay on as party leader.

I have to admit: I’m kind of hoping that Dion stays on in the role, or at least attempts to. Such a move would fracture the Liberals, probably irreparably. But I really can’t see him surviving long in the post: his party just lost 26 seats, mostly to Jack Layton’s NDP, and I’m pretty sure that the knives are being sharpened. There will be a leadership race soon enough, and the Liberals will put someone more…well…competent at the helm. I hate to frame it in such terms, but there it is: Stephane Dion was not an effective leader for his party, and it has cost them dearly. It could well be time for Michael Ignatieff to finally take over the party leadership. Then again, Justin Trudeau just got himself elected, and I could see Pierre’s boy throwing his name in the hat in a leadership race. Jay Currie has his money on Bob Rae.

Please to cringe now, good Reader.

Of course, the Liberal coffers are basically empty at the moment. This puts a very interesting spin on things, both in terms of the future prospects of the party itself, and on the tone that the Harper minority will set when Parliament resumes. It was the case, with this last election, that the Liberals weren’t well-equipped financially to fight an election. They’re in an even worse position now, and so will have to think very carefully about undertaking any voting effort which would see the Conservative government defeated on a confidence motion. The last thing they can afford is another election, no matter how badly they might want another shot at power.

I very much doubt they even have the money to hold a leadership race at present. That presents its own problems, given that Dion simply cannot stay on as leader if the party is to survive and recover. So what to do? We saw the Progressive Conservative Party of Canada die a couple of elections ago — could we be seeing the end of the Liberals as well?

That’s certainly one possibility — one hope, I might even say. As far as this election goes, the bleak future of the Liberals is one of the more interesting outcomes. As Jay Currie notes, they’ve basically been reduced to being the Toronto Party — that’s never a good sign.

There were a few notable upsets, too. Local to Edmonton, Rahim Jaffer lost the Strathcona riding to NDP candidate Linda Duncan, which came as something of a surprise (both CTV and the CBC had called that riding in Jaffer’s favour as of the time I went to bed). The big surprise for me was Garth Turner losing his seat — that was unexpected, but nice to see all the same. Karma’s a bitch.

(More than a few people were happy about Garth’s defeat. I also note that others observed, as I did, that the Elections Canada website went down — hard — yesterday evening.)

I’m not at all impressed with the fact that the NDP made some gains, although I suppose it was inevitable that it would happen. As Grace remarked to me last night, progressive Liberal voters wanting to flee from Green Shift and Dion were a shoe-in for the Dippers. That such people don’t have the best interests of Canada at heart is a side discussion. Still, it’s consoling to remember that Jack Layton’s people are still the fourth-place party in Canada; the Bloc Quebecois picked up more seats than them. I doubt that there will be a leadership race in the NDP as a result of this election…but one can always hope, can’t one?

Now, I mentioned that the stronger Conservative majority was a vote of confidence in the Conservative Party’s leadership and performance thus far, and I definitely stand by that opinion. At the same time, though, it should be noted that it was also a vote in favour of the status quo. It’s not likely that anything will change in the wake of the latest Harper victory, at least not in terms of shoring up the strength of the human right to freedom of expression. Section 13 of the CHRA will likely remain “on the books,” although there is some hope that the Young Offenders Act will be made more harsh.

Now, the only question that remains is how long this latest government will stand. A year? Two years? Longer? It would be strange to think that any minority government would survive the full legal duration of a term in office, but I suppose it’s possible. With the Liberals all but crippled — financially and at a leadership level — the Conservatives will have what amounts to an effective majority, though not an actual numeric one. That’s a condition that is not likely to clear in any expedient manner, either. I’m thinking it’ll be at least 30 months until the next election, if not 36.

Update: Welcome, Steynians!

It’s hardly enough, but any law which recognizes that the unborn are living, human beings worthy of some manner of protection from harm is a good thing. And with the Liberals paralyzed for fear of triggering an election, and the NDP and Bloc Quebecois to weakened at the moment to present serious opposition to the bill, now is the perfect time for the Conservative government to be passing it.

A controversial federal justice bill that would make it a separate crime if a fetus dies when its mother is attacked passed through the second stage of proceedings in Parliament on Wednesday.

But MPs opposed to the bill — who say it’s a back-door attempt to attack abortion rights — say they will try to make sure the bill never makes it out of committee.

“I think the NDP, the Bloc and about half the Liberals will mobilize at committee stage to try and nip this in the bud,” said New Democrat MP Pat Martin.

The Unborn Victims of Crime Act passed second reading Wednesday evening by seven votes, splitting support among the Conservatives, Liberals and NDP.

Martin and other critics — including pro-choice groups — fear that, by giving the fetus a right through this legislation, it opens the door for anti-abortion groups to go back to court and argue against abortion.

I like how the newspaper reporter didn’t bother to seek out the opinion of pro-life groups or supporters of the bill, preferring to stay safely on the pro-choice side of the issue and only quoting those who oppose the bill. Media bias aside, though, there’s good news here.

It’s beyond all reasonable debate that the fetus is human, and that it is alive, and that it is a unique being set apart from either of its parents; it is, genetically speaking, different from both the mother and the father. Observations of that nature tend to do away with most of the pro-abortion arguments one tends to encounter, including the notion that the only issue is a woman’s right to “control her own body” (because it’s not just her body, is it?).

Indeed, the only recourse that the pro-abortion lobby has, in the face of the facts, is to argue that the unborn are not “persons” under the law, and to oppose any and all attempts to grant them some or all of the rights enjoyed by those who, under the law, are considered “persons.” If that sort of reasoning sounds familiar, it ought to — notions of personhood have been used to justify the bigotry and murderous excesses of many a dictator, and even a few racist groups, throughout history. Marching in lockstep with the notion of personhood is the notion of “wantedness,” and the suggestion that it is legal and morally acceptable to kill those unborn children which are not “wanted” by the mother. Apparently, though, that reasoning is only valid up until the moment of the child being born — if the mother should decide a couple of years later that she no longer “wants” the child, she’s out of luck.

Not that one could ever accuse the pro-choice side of having the most consistent arguments, logically speaking.

And yet, the plain fact of the matter is that if someone does kill a pregnant woman, two lives are ended; if a pregnant woman is attacked and loses her baby, a human being has still died. Any reasonable person ought to be able to see that in that circumstance, a punishable offence has occurred, and that Canadian law should include provisions to prosecute those who commit such crimes. If nothing else, this bill — Bill C-484 is its technical name — is a breath of fresh air and fresh thinking from a government that, two years on, continues to impress.

And it should pass, not only because it will throw pro-choicers everywhere into hysterics, but because it reflects a biological reality.

So apparently the Senate, already being expert in the field of national governance, have expanded their knowledge base to include cutting-edge theology. Or perhaps “bleeding heart Theology” — I can’t really tell anymore.

My respect for Senator Anne Cools has gone up a few more notches, however. Though a member of the unelected portion of the Canadian government, she displays a level-headedness and clarity of principle that the and NDP seem completely devoid of, that the Bloc Quebecois sometimes displays but limits in focus to Quebec, and that the Conservative Party could display if they ever stopped trying to placate both the Liberal government and the liberal media.

I wonder exactly where the fundamental understanding of Jesus and His message goes wrong with Senator Marilyn Trenholme Counsell. On the surface, it seems she thinks of our Lord as some sort of hip swinger, someone who’d permit anything in the name of being “fair”.

Not exactly the picture of Jesus painted in the Gospels, is it? Certainly, Jesus’s message was one of peace and understanding, and certainly He tore down many barriers between Jew and Gentile, man and woman, slave and master, invader and invaded. He preached that all were equal in God’s eyes, and never turned away those who sought him.

Okay, that part sounds kind of like the picture our Senator paints. But is that the whole picture of Jesus?

As I recall it, if people came to Jesus as sinners, one of the first things He would do is ask them to repent and sin no more. If people came to Jesus who were sinners but did not realize it, or thought their actions permissible/moral/justified, He would correct them, often in a very direct and sometimes harsh way. He was especially harsh with the self-righteous authorities, those convinced of the correctness of their ways because of their status in society (not unlike, I would wager, a certain Senator I could name).

When he stopped the stoning of the adulterous woman, He did not condone her sin. He stood up not in support of her right to fornicate herself silly — instead, He stood up against the hypocrisy of those would would overlook their own sin in their zeal to condemn her, since all sins are equal in magnitude before God. And when her would-be executioners had left, He turned to her and (much more gently, but firmly nonetheless) told her to end her sinful practice.

When Jesus met the woman at the well in Galilee, He treated her as an equal, a valued child of God and a person. He did not condone her five (or was it six? Curse my memory…) marriages, nor the fact that she was shacking up with someone she was not married to (note: tacit condemnation of common-law relationships, people!). In fact, He pointed these things out to her as an example of her sin, and His frankness with her inspired her to repent.

Would Jesus support gay-marriage legislation? I think anyone who claims to speak for Jesus, as our Senator has done, is guilty of blasphemy, and so I won’t come out with a “yes” or “no” answer. But I will leave this parting thought:

Christian moral philosophy teaches that proper sexual relations have two seperate but indivisible parts: unification and procreation. If a couple engages in sexual union that is open to one but blocks the other, this is a sin, because it violates the natural order and God’s intention for humanity. Proper sexual relationships should be a joining, strengthening force in the lives of the couple, but the couple should always be open to the possibility of bringing forth a child. (And no, this isn’t the Monty Python conflation that “every time they have sex, they have to have a baby”.)

Bearing that in mind, and assuming for just a moment that the Church has got something right in its understanding after 2000 years of ministry, one has to ask whether a homosexual union qualifies. Certainly, I will be the first to concede that homosexual sexual relations, like heterosexual relations, can be unitive in nature. I admit that’s speculation on my part, having never had a homosexual affair myself, but I would wager it likely. But even in that case, that’s only part of the puzzle, isn’t it? And we could start the debate over artificial insemination and surrogacy, but let’s cut to the chase on that one: procreation, in its natural state, involves one zygote from each partner in the sexual union, so that the child will be biologically related to both of the people it will come to know as “parents”. Wake me when that’s possible in a non-heterosexual setting.

And really, given that same-sex marriage is already a morally contentious issue, do we really need to open the “embryos debate” can of worms too?

Do I support “equal rights” for homosexuals? That depends on what you mean. As I understand it, they are human too, and as such already have equal rights under the law in Canada, even before the various related Supreme Court filings. Should they not be discriminated against on the basis of their sexuality? My first answer is yes. But I think even there I need to disclaim. I think respect is a two-way street, and I think that homosexual lobbyists should not force their agenda on those whose personal beliefs hold the homosexual lifestyle as immoral. That means no bullying town mayors who don’t want to take part in “Pride” days. That means accepting that religions institutions may not condone promotion of that lifestyle in their classes. That even means accepting that some churches, mosques, synagogues, and temples will refuse to perform marriages for homosexual couples…not because they are discriminatory, but because for them the morality of the issue is anything but settled. And in return, I say that yes, homosexuals should not be targets of hate crimes, should not be denied employment (see caveat above), and should continue to enjoy the same full legal protection of the that they have since its institution in 1982.

But, as Anne Cools noted in the Senate debate: “Marriage is not now and has never been a right…No sacrament of the church has ever been a right.”