The Conservatives should double down on religious freedom

National Post, 11 September 2020

A strong defence of religious liberty, here and abroad, is the right thing to do. It may even be good politics.

Everyone has advice for Erin O’Toole, newly minted leader of the loyal Opposition. My colleague William Watson observed that, with a Liberal leftward turn, the political middle is now miles and miles wide. Biblical wisdom advises against taking the wide road, but then politics does not operate entirely by the dominical injunctions of holy writ.

There will be a temptation to oppose only, to allow the government, as it is said, to defeat itself. There is something remarkable about this government’s scandals. Not for them the grubby business of losing a mid-level minister who no one had ever heard of until he resigned. No, this government has lost a justice minister-attorney general, a health minister-Indigenous minister-president of the Treasury Board, the prime minister’s principal secretary and the clerk of the privy council, the last of which was not really thought possible to do. Now the finance minister is gone and WE Charity is fleeing the country, despite having done nothing wrong and more right than perhaps anyone since the Acts of the Apostles, as the Kielburger brothers will happily tell you.

One trembles at the protestations of confidence the prime minister has made on behalf of the governor general, surely as fulsome and sincere as the protestations of confidence given to the former finance minister. It would be truly astonishing if the government managed to lose the vice-regal representative, but it is not beyond possibility, as Her Excellency, despite a high-flying astronaut background, has not managed even to clear the low bar of residing in the official residence.

Some voices may thus offer counsels of caution, adopting the Joe Biden strategy of not being the incumbent. But Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is not U.S. President Donald Trump. In any case, something more robust ought to be on offer.

Herewith then a suggestion for the Conservative party, a policy that is the right thing to do and may even be good politics.

In 2011, when then-prime minister Stephen Harper won his majority government, he did very well in urban areas with new Canadians. He also made defending religious liberty a top priority. The two are not unrelated.

Continue reading at the National Post.