Is morality a conservative issue? Not in Canada

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http://www.bostonglobe.com/ideas/2013/01/27/morality-conservative-issue-not-canada/A0pgMynakCj9QJ3p0GFRUI/story.html

How the American and Canadian right wings took diverging ideological paths

By James Farney | GLOBE CORRESPONDENT JANUARY 27, 2013


AP PHOTO/SEAN KILPATRICK, THE CANADIAN PRESS
Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper and President Barack Obama at the 2010 Nuclear Security Summit in Washington, D.C.

LAST YEAR Stephen Woodworth, a member of Canada’s Parliament, introduced a motion to create an expert panel that would reexamine how Canada’s criminal laws define the beginning of human life. The point was clear: He wanted to open a debate over abortion, currently handled as a purely medical matter in Canada, and consider whether it might be redefined as a crime.

Woodworth is a member of the Conservative Party, and his motion drew a strong response. The four liberal opposition parties, not surprisingly, immediately condemned it. But so did many of his fellow Conservatives. Prime Minister Stephen Harper, an evangelical Christian and arguably the most right-wing Canadian leader in history, declared the motion “unfortunate” and made clear he would be voting against it. The Conservative responsible for maintaining government discipline in the House, Gordon O’Connor, went further, declaring, “This should never happen in a civilized society....I cannot understand why those who are adamantly opposed to abortion want to impose their beliefs on others by way of the Criminal Code.”

Much as Americans may joke about it as an outpost of Europe to our north, Canada is the nation most similar to the United States in the world—not just culturally, but in its politics. Its Conservative Party, in power since 2006, has been steadfastly pro-Israel, ended diplomatic relations with Iran, rolled back gun control, reduced the size of the federal bureaucracy, minimized environmental regulations to encourage resource development, and offloaded responsibilities for the welfare state to the provinces. A mainstream Republican who ended up north of the border would find Canadian conservatism, in many respects, a perfectly congenial political home.

But not in every respect. As the response to Woodworth’s motion indicates, a striking difference has arisen between the conservative movement in the two countries on social issues. Though Canada has seen some argument over same-sex marriage and abortion, it almost totally lacks America’s charged partisan debates over social issues such as school prayer, the teaching of evolution in schools (even as many religious schools receive government financial support), or religious exemptions to our publicly funded health care system. There are groups concerned with these issues, but they aren’t seen as bread-and-butter conservative principles.

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