The House of Commons status of women committee has installed a new chair, elected against her will on Tuesday, after a partisan fracas blocked the Conservative Party’s previous candidate due to her opposition to abortion rights.
The bizarre turn-of-events began last week when Conservative leader Andrew Scheer nominated Rachael Harder, an Alberta politician who believes women should not have access to abortion services unless the life of the mother is in jeopardy, to lead parliament’s committee on women’s rights.
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Liberal and NDP committee members protested, walking out of a hearing and blocking the vote to elect Harder as chair. Harder also serves as the Conservative shadow minister on the status of women.
“On a committee 100 percent dedicated to advancing women’s equality and women’s rights having [an] anti-choice chair is unacceptable,” NDP status of women critic Sheila Malcolmson told reporters as the snafu unfolded.
The spat culminated on Tuesday when Conservative MP Karen Vecchio was elected to chair the committee by the Liberals, even after saying she didn’t want the job.
The Conservative Party has railed against the move.
“The prime minister politicized the status of women committee and ordered his Liberal members to bully and intimidate a female member of Parliament,” wrote Conservatives Harder and Vecchio in a statement.
“One would hope that the committee for the status of women would have a spokesperson who would be able to stand up and unequivocally defend women’s rights”
“For Justin Trudeau to say, a member of Parliament is unfit to hold a procedural position because she doesn’t agree with his personal position, is ridiculous.”
Chairing a Parliamentary committee is not an insignificant job. Chairs can pick committee witnesses and help craft the agenda, and are expected to enforce the rules of the committee.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau waded into the fight last week.
“One would hope that the committee for the status of women would have a spokesperson who would be able to stand up and unequivocally defend women’s rights,” Trudeau said in a press conference last week. “That’s sort of the point of the status of women committee.”
Harder had originally obtained a solid pro-life endorsement from the Campaign Life Coalition, an anti-abortion lobby group — which also opposes human rights protections for transgender Canadians. They rescinded that endorsement after Harder, reportedly, told a crowd she believes in providing women with access to abortion.
After that happened, the organization said on its website, Harder’s campaign manager called: “Asking to have the ‘pro-life’ rating restored.”
Since being elected, Harder has received a perfect score on her voting record from the Campaign Life Coalition.
The debacle has reignited accusations that the Liberals are using their majority in the House of Commons to run roughshod over the other parties.
“My Conservative government will not re-open this debate.”
While the Conservative Party has tried to distance itself from its social conservative roots, the affair also demonstrates that doing so might be easier said than done.
During the party’s leadership race, ardent social conservatives Brad Trost and Pierre Lemieux did better than expected. Trost finished fourth, winning 14 percent of the vote. Both ran on platforms of restricting abortion access in Canada.
Scheer, who won that race after 13 ballots, has also faced questions about his own social policies. He was, in the past, firmly against gay marriage and abortion rights.
In recent years, however, Scheer has avoided social policy questions. Since becoming leader of the Conservatives he has promised to leave those issues alone.
“My Conservative government will not re-open this debate,” he told reporters in May.
