Planting seeds of doubt about Tories, Erin O'Toole and health-care rights
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It took less than a week for the Liberal campaign to paint the Conservative party, and leader Erin O’Toole, as secret reactionaries who will roll back health-care rights such as access to abortion and assisted suicide.
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In the 2019 federal election, the Liberals hammered then-leader Andrew Scheer for his reluctance and inability to offer clear answers about abortion and same-sex marriage. The Alberta New Democrats tried the same strategy against Jason Kenney’s United Conservatives, also in 2019, but with markedly less success.
The Conservative platform, released unusually early, on day two of the campaign, contains on page 147 a reference to conscience rights, alongside promises to ban conversion therapy and end the ban on gay men donating blood.
“We will protect the conscience rights of healthcare professionals,” it says.
Katy Merrifield, vice-president of Wellington Advocacy and the former director of communications for Alberta premier Jason Kenney, said the Liberal internal polling must be “incredibly concerning” for them to resort to this tactic so early.
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“It’s day four of the campaign … and they’re already fear-mongering about social conservative bogeymen that simply don’t exist,” she said.
Carolyn Bennett, who served as minister of Crown-Indigenous relations, and is the Liberal candidate for Toronto-St. Paul’s, said in a tweet on Thursday morning that O’Toole was “pushing extreme-right policies.”
The promise, she claimed, would “let doctors deny and prevent referral for abortion, medical assistance in dying, and care for LGBTQ2 Canadians.”
“This is why we can’t back down,” tweeted Katie Telford, Justin Trudeau’s chief of staff.
Jason Lietaer, a former Conservative strategist who’s now with strategic communications firm Enterprise, said the Liberals take this tack because it’s worked in the past.
“It worked for them in 2004 when they branded Stephen Harper as a social conservative even though he wasn’t one, and it worked again for them in 2019 when they branded Andrew Scheer as social conservative, and he was one, to be fair,” Lietaer said.
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Charles Bird, who ran the Ontario campaign in 2005-6 for Paul Martin, and is the managing principal at Earnscliffe Strategy Group, said the Conservatives, by including such a platform promise, invited trouble, even if they were attempting to woo social conservatives.
“It leaves the party open to a host of potential attacks where Conservatives have traditionally been very vulnerable,” Bird said. “It’s likely the last thing Erin O’Toole needed during the first week of the federal campaign.”
Doctors in Canada may refuse to provide services to which they have moral or religious objections. When it comes to assisted suicide, for example, the Canadian Medical Association says it “equally supports conscientious participation in and conscientious objection to assistance in dying by physicians.”
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These policies are why a Christian doctor can refuse to provide abortions or medically assisted dying, though some doctors have also objected to providing fertility treatments, contraception or prescribing erectile dysfunction medication.
But, in the case of a refusal, in most provinces, doctors must refer a patient to a different physician.
In Alberta, doctors must provide “timely access” to another physician or provide a resource with information about the service; in Ontario, it must be an “effective referral,” whereas in Quebec, doctors must “offer to help the patient find another physician.” In Manitoba, doctors need not refer a patient, but must provide further resources.
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So far, the Conservative party has declined to elaborate on the question of referrals, and whether or not the conscience rights protections they’re proposing would broaden the ability of Canadian doctors to refuse referrals in addition to specific services.
But, in his run to become Conservative leader in 2020, O’Toole’s platform said he would protect “the conscience rights of all healthcare professionals whose beliefs, religious or otherwise, prevent them from carrying out or referring patients for services that violate their conscience.”
In an email, a spokesman for the party told the National Post its position on conscience rights is the same as the Liberal position, and sent a number of quotes from Liberal politicians about conscience rights.
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In the debate in Parliament on medical assistance in dying, Liberals, including Justice Minister David Lametti, who’s running for re-election in LaSalle-Émard-Verdun, repeatedly stressed they would respect the conscience rights of doctors.
“No medical practitioner is forced to give the procedure in any way, shape or form, and we’ve protected that,” Lametti said.
O’Toole did attempt to address the issue on Thursday morning, saying he’s pro-choice, and that there needs to be a balance that respects doctors’ conscience rights.
“I am pro-choice, I have a pro-choice record and that’s how I will be. I think it’s also possible to show respect for our nurses, our healthcare professionals, with respect particularly to the expansion of medical assistance in dying,” he said.
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In a tweet, Maryam Monsef, the minister for women, said O’Toole was only “pretending” to be pro-choice.
The Post asked the Liberal party how its views on conscience rights differ from the Conservatives, and why they’ve seized on the issue. Neither question was answered, but the party claimed the Conservative pledge means doctors could refuse services or referrals “for anything that they disagree with.”
Matt Solberg, a former conservative staffer in Alberta and director of New West Public Affairs, said the wedge-issue strategy works when the public has reasons to doubt a leader’s honesty.
“I’m not so sure that’s the case this time around,” said Solberg. “It doesn’t mean the federal Liberals won’t keep trying.”
• Email: tdawson@postmedia.com | Twitter:
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