Election delivered blow to religious freedom

The Catholic Register, 08 November 2019

MacKay’s position, held by others, is that despite Scheer’s public support for same-sex marriage laws currently in force, it is his private religious views that are intolerable.

The 2019 federal election blew an ill wind toward religious believers in Canada.

Peter MacKay, former foreign minister and minister of justice under Stephen Harper, demonstrating a certain opportunism, accused Andrew Scheer of losing an election that should have been an easy win — “like having a breakaway on an open net and missing the net.” 

The cause? Views on same-sex marriage that were like a “stinking albatross” around the Conservative leader’s neck.

Impressive that with such an apparently disqualifying position, Scheer still won more votes than the Liberals. What necklace of avian putrefaction were they wearing?

The solution? Get another leader. Perhaps MacKay?

So why did MacKay not run back in 2017 for the Conservative leadership? Why did so many other leading Conservatives not run?

It’s because they knew our history. Canadians never defeat a first-term government looking for re-election. That’s why none of the party bigfoots, like MacKay, ran in 2017. They knew they would lose to Trudeau in 2019 — because everyone always does to a first-term government — and did not want to wear the blame like an albatross afterward.

Yes, I know there were two exceptions. But they were exceptions that confirm the rule. In 1935, in the midst of the Great Depression, a first-term government was defeated. R.B. Bennett lost, but he lost to the immediate former prime minister, the wily Mackenzie King. Canadians like stability in government. 

Then in 1979, Joe Clark was elected only to fumble away his government nine months later. Again, the immediate former prime minister came back — Pierre Trudeau.

So before too much blame is heaped upon Scheer, let it be known that had he won, he would have accomplished something that has never before been done in Canadian history. Hardly an open net. 

Continue reading at The Catholic Register:
https://www.catholicregister.org/opinion/columnists/item/30636-fr-raymond-de-souza-election-delivered-blow-to-religious-freedom