(LifeSiteNews) — After a snap election call on March 23 and a whirlwind 36-day campaign, Canadians decided to grant the Liberal Party an almost unprecedented fourth term on Monday night.
Prime Minister Mark Carney won a parliamentary seat; federal Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre lost his, despite increasing the Conservative vote share to the highest levels since 1988. With 168 seats, Carney’s Liberals may be able to cut a deal with the NDP, which has been reduced to only 7 seats and – with Jagmeet Singh’s loss and resignation – is currently leaderless. There could be another election before the year is out; a coalition could ensure four more years of Liberal rule.
A few key takeaways
In his victory speech, Mark Carney presented an agenda that bore not the slightest resemblance to the views he described in his 2021 book Values; in interviews over the past two decades; or indeed, to the advice he has been giving to Justin Trudeau as his top economic advisor over the past several years. He mentioned climate change only once and instead insisted that he will make Canada an “energy superpower.” Either he is shapeshifting to obtain a majority and hang on to power, or he’s merely another wealthy elite who fixated on climate change for the purposes of virtue-signaling. I suspect it is the first.
A number of very good social conservative candidates won on Monday night. In Cloverdale-Langley City, Tamara Jansen is returning to Parliament after serving from 2019 to 2021, losing her seat, and now winning election once again. Jansen is a principled, pro-life social conservative.
In Elgin-St. Thomas-London South, conservative commentator and bestselling author (The Freedom Convoy, Pierre Poilievre: A Political Life) Andrew Lawton won. One of Lawton’s key issues was stopping the expansion of assisted suicide to those suffering from mental illness; in 2021, Lawton wrote a powerful personal piece for The Interim titled, “I’d be dead if C-7 was law 10 years ago,” detailing his own suicide attempt and struggle with mental illness.
Another welcome victory was Jamil Jivani, who sounded the alarm last December about increasing discrimination against Christians in Canada. Garnett Genuis, an Edmonton MP, has also been drawing attention to a progressive campaign to remove charitable status from Christian institutions, including churches – a threat that, despite being included as a recommendation from the Standing Committee on Finance last fall, got surprisingly little attention during the campaign.
Despite the disappointing overall result, the fact that the number of pro-life parliamentarians grew is a welcome consolation prize.
My primary concern this election cycle is the scheduled 2027 expansion of euthanasia to those suffering solely from mental illness. As I have noted many times over the past months, stopping this expansion must be the top priority for anyone who wishes to protect the vulnerable.
This is the first time in Canada in my adult lifetime that it is possible to stop something truly evil with predictable consequences in the immediate term. If eligibility is expanded to those with mental illness, we will be faced with conveyor belt of horrifying and tragic stories. If we stop it, those lives will be protected. In this minority Parliament, we must redouble our efforts. This expansion has been delayed twice before. This can – and must – be stopped.
Billboard Chris, the anti-gender ideology activist, pinpointed one of the Conservative Party’s key problems:
The Conservative Party’s fundamental flaw is that they are reactive, not proactive. They do nothing to move the Overton Window and make conservative policies more palatable for Canadians. Until they start doing that, they will always be trying to recruit Liberal voters with liberal policies that make them fundamentally un-Conservative. Truth wins, and they need to start telling more of it, unreservedly.
This is true. Politicians must work inside the Overton window to a degree, true – but Poilievre openly campaigned against the social conservative wing of the party, put out the most pro-abortion platform in decades, and declined to mention euthanasia except to affirm it as a “right,” even when the U.N. condemned Canada’s assisted suicide regime.
The Conservative Party leadership has an identity crisis; they seem genuinely embarrassed about several key factions in their coalition and thus wish to present themselves as social progressives with a slightly better accountant than the other guys. That strategy didn’t exactly “bring it home” on Monday night.
