Last week’s scrambling by the federal government to quell the uproar from border-crossing and off-shore husband/husband and wife/wife pairings appeared, at least on the surface, to quell something else: former Prime Minister Jean Chretien’s assertion that the ruling Conservatives are out to kill same-sex marriage.
Back in December, Chretien wrote in a Liberal Party fundraising letter that the Harper government had already “ended gun control” and removed the nation’s signature on the international Kyoto climate change initiative. “Next may be a woman’s right to choose, or gay marriage. Then might come capital punishment. And one by one, the values we cherish as Canadians will be gone.”
With Justice Minister Rob Nicholson’s promise that “we will change the Civil Marriage Act so that any marriages performed in Canada that aren’t recognized in the couple’s home jurisdiction will be recognized in Canada” — in tandem with an accusation, quite likely true, that it was actually the Liberals who left the legislation unfinished — it seems almost certain Chretien can strike “gay marriage” off his supposed list of Tory bulls-eye targets.
But what others could he strike? And which ones did he miss in the fundraising letter?
The border-crossing gay marriage story speaks to Har-per’s oft-reported control, through the Prime Minister’s Office, over backbench (and even Cabinet) MPs. In many Conservative ridings across the country, same-sex marriage remains a hot-button issue. Members of riding associations from east to west would like to see Canada relinquish its role as a leader in recognizing gay rights.
Harper believes otherwise, and uses a well-documented, iron-willed Conservative Party enforcement system to keep the dissenters in line.
So, when it comes to Chretien’s list, you can scratch off anything to which Harper isn’t personally devoted. And, much as the neo-Christian wing of the party might hope to disagree, the right to choose and capital punishment probably aren’t on that list.
One thing to which Harper is definitely devoted, however — and it was demonstrated through his government’s swift reversal on Kyoto, as well as more recent statements against the US government-inspired delay of the Keystone pipeline — is building Alberta’s oilsands.
“I don’t ever recall a time, except maybe during the (1980s) free-trade debate, when the government has put so much stock in trade negotiations at the centre of its economic policy,” said former federal trade negotiator John Weekes, in a Dec. 26 article in the Financial Post. And the main thrust of those meetings is securing a broader market — beyond the US — for Alberta oil.
Some Conservative MPs might warn of sacrifices on the road to full-scale oil sands development: sacrifices of en-vironment stewardship; or of supply managed farm products offered up as bargaining chips in trade deals. But if Harper is devoted to the cause, as he certainly seems to be, those arguments could fall on deaf ears.