Last week, LifeSiteNews interviewed Campaign Life Coalition National President and International Right to Life Vice President Jim Hughes about his organization's involvement in the Canadian federal election now underway. The extensive interview, in which Hughes gives frank comments about the Canadian political scene, is being presented in two parts. See Part II in tomorrow's LifeSiteNews.
Jim Hughes has personally known and interacted with hundreds of Canadian politicians and several federal political regimes in his over 30 years of intense involvement in the Canadian political scene.
Interview With Jim Hughes
LifeSiteNews: A federal election has been called - what is your response to that, being the leader of Canada's national pro-life political organization?
Jim Hughes: Well, unfortunately, my first reaction is "ho-hum." There don't seem to be any clear cut issues facing the Canadian electorate. The issues that are important to us have been carefully concealed and the parties are still fighting like crazy to ensure that the topics don't even come up. You see the majority of polls in Canada time and again showing people in Canada want some restrictions on abortion and despite that, you have all these wishy-washy or just plain cowardly politicians refusing to take a strong stand.
So, the political strategists are saying - "what else are they going to do but vote for us - there is no alternative." That is what you hear within the Conservative camp and then of course, you have the Liberals who are saying, "We have so many rural Protestants on our side and so many Roman Catholics on our side and so many new Canadians who don't understand the issues who are on our side because we brought them into our country that we can tell them what the issues are."
You have a widening gulf between the electorate and the people running for office. And you find this especially so with the parties telling candidates not to answer questionnaires. Whereas, in the United states, it seems to be quite open as to where the candidates stand on the issues that are important to the electorate, here in Canada, despite the claims that there is going to be this new transparency, we have seen Stephen Harper constantly brow-beating his members of Parliament into almost total silence.
I think the case of Ken Epp's Bill C-484 - the Unborn Victims of Crime Bill - was absolutely terrible - the lengths the government went to, to ensure that there would be no rights for the child in the womb - even no right's for the wanted child in the womb. They did that despite the fact so many people wanted Ken Epp's bill - a common sense bill. So, even though it wasn't a piece of pro-life legislation, it was certainly something recognizing fetal rights which so many MPs and Canadian voters have said that they want to see but which the Tory leadership are all afraid of.
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