The Globe takes a black and white, and overly simplified approach.

It is simply not true that the only role for the chair is to manage the committee meetings. Chairpersons, as the Globe well knows, play many other roles from setting the committee's agenda, to mediating conflicts among committee members, and to representing the committee outside of committee meetings. Ms. Harder may be a competent chairperson in a technical sense, but this is not the issue here.

The issue is the confused mandate of the committee. The Globe says the role of the committee is to examine equality between the sexes and violence against women and children. The majority public perspective is pro choice (and increasingly so) on the abortion policy issue. For the majority of Canadians, there is a presumption of pro choice, and that being pro life from a policy perspective means being anti-equality and pro-violence. Ms. Harder simply needed to say that she will publicly support a policy of pro choice.