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Election financing rules and double standards

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Election financing. We have regulated speech, not free speech, in Canada. This means that groups and individuals (“third parties”) cannot spend as much money as they’d like for (or against) candidates in an election. (For more on Canada’s gag law, this Calgary Herald editorial explains.)

This runs contrary to rules of free speech. I am against that law. But it still stands. And if Friends of Science and Barry Cooper can be charged, as the Herald piece explains they were, who else should be?  

Why am I asking these questions? Because I’m curious to know how much money pro-abortion groups are spending telling me not to vote for Harper? Has anyone asked that? Are they registered? Should they be?

Representatives from Abortion Rights Coalition of Canada, Canadian Labour Congress, the Ottawa Coalition to End Violence Against Women, Federation du Quebec pour le planning des naissances and Action Canada for Population and Development (ACPD) held the press conference, describing themselves as a united front in the mobilization of women voters.

Does spending money telling voters who not to vote for (Harper) qualify under the Elections Spending Act?

Let me be very clear–I think those pro-abortion groups should be allowed to speak freely, and spend as much as they want. But what I’m not keen on is a double standard, whereby groups on the “wrong” side are charged (Friends of Science, National Citizens Coalition to name but two) and groups with elite support (pro-abortion groups) are not.

(Cross-posted to The Shotgun.)

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Brigitte is jumping up and down, clapping her hands: Oh, good one! Any minute now, we should expect the thought police Elections Canada to descend on the gals, right? Right?

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Véronique must start reading more Alberta-based newspapers. Whoa, this is so refreshing to read!

I laugh in the face of danger

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Joyce Arthur, coordinator of the Abortion Rights Coalition of Canada, called the Angus Reid poll “dangerous,” here.

 Feminists who are politically aware hear about this bill and immediately know what the problem is,” Arthur [said].

Clearly, Joyce Arthur and I do not share the same definition of dangerous. I feel that stiffer charges for violent criminals (as itemized in Bill C-484) are conducive to a less dangerous society. What can I say? I’m a little out there with my views sometimes.

Angus Reid Strategies’ director of global studies, Mario Canseco, [said] that the poll was not financed by any outside party and undertaken “out of our own interest”. Canseco called Arthur’s criticism of the way the poll was conducted “normal” and added, “this is one of the ways people react to surveys that show that not everyone agrees with them”.

The question nobody’s asking

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If I weren’t afraid of stale metaphors, I’d say this is where the rubber meets the road.

Some MPs are rallying support for a proposed law that would make it a crime to kill or injure an unborn child after a Winnipeg woman, who was eight months pregnant, was shot to death.

Conservative MP Ken Epp, who recently tabled private member’s bill C-484 called the “Unborn Victims of Crime Act,” said the legislation would create a new offence in the Criminal Code. The bill addresses a “huge gap” in law when a violent act is perpetrated against a woman who has chosen to carry the fetus to term, he said.

“This is a case when the woman has decided to have that child, and that choice has to be protected in law,” Epp said. “I’ve made no secret of the fact that I’m pro-life. But this bill goes very narrowly at one issue — where the woman has made the choice to have the child, and that choice is taken away unilaterally, without her consent and usually with violence.”

Seems like a no-brainer. Most people, I think, would agree attacking a pregnant woman is worse than attacking a man or a non-pregnant woman. It’s just one of these things everybody knows. Including, it would appear, the pro-abortion person the newspaper story had to quote.

Carolyn Egan, a spokeswoman for the Abortion Rights Coalition of Canada, said the usual things about slippery slopes and women’s rights (as if the rights of women who actually want to keep their babies didn’t count), but then, in the words of the newspaper story, she “suggested a more appropriate way of dealing with such a serious crime is for the courts to impose a stiffer sentence for the perpetrator when the victim is pregnant.”

And nobody thought to ask her why. Why impose a stiffer sentence for the perpetrator when the victim is pregnant? Why should the justice system care about a clump of cells that, we insist, is NOT a person?

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