While before the election Mulroney was hostile to both the Reform Party and its successor, the Canadian Alliance, he now favors a merger with his own PCs, provided that the divisiveness of social conservatism is junked. Mulroney may be right, but the results of election 2000 don t bear him out at least not yet. Election 2000 proved beyond doubt that social conservatives will face intense and nasty attacks should they show any prospect of making gains. It also showed that if those attacks are suffered for the most part in silence, they will have a limited but not fatal effect. What remains to be seen is what would happen if social conservatives were to fight back.
Abortion provides the clearest example.
The Canadian Alliance paid the price for being against abortion, but its pro life position was so weak that it did not attract voters who are troubled by the more extreme aspects of the abortion license in Canada. Day s response to the attacks Abortion isn t even on the platform of the party gave him the worst of both worlds. Next time round, pro life forces will have to offer something that puts the other side on the defensive whether it is a ban on partial birth abortion, a limitation of public funding, or even simple regulatory enforcement that would end the current de facto exemption of abortion clinics from the standard regulation of private health care facilities in Canada. More broadly, social conservatives can no longer content themselves with moaning about exclusion from Canadian public life. It should be de rigueur that any politician or journalist who treats believing Christians as the equivalent of Nazi sympathizers will face a united front of religious spokesmen who will condemn antireligious bigotry and demand consequences.