Canadian government unsure whether birth control saves lives

Image by AFP/Getty Images via Daylife

I suppose a lot of the time the thinking goes that losing a public battle in politics is just about the worst thing possible. It’s better to sidestep rather than backtrack. Prime Minister Stephen Harper is growing quite adept at that sort of rhetorical shuffle, as since returning from the prorogation, his government has had to do it a few times already. The latest dance was around this week’s bizarre stance on whether Canada would include birth control in its foreign aid initiative for women and children in poor countries. International Cooperation Minister Bev Oda said it would not. Then Foreign Affairs Minister Lawrence Cannon said that the plan, “does not deal in any way, shape or form with family planning. Indeed, the purpose of this is to be able to save lives.”

Not surprisingly, everyone was left a bit confused.

As NDP leader Jack Layton asked in Question Period, “How can a program aimed at reducing maternal mortality not allow for contraception as part of the program?”

Good question.

Then came the back-tracking. Sort of. Layton pressed Harper in the House again on the topic, asking the Prime Minister whether he or his government believed that contraceptives saved lives, Harper replied,

“Mr. Speaker, the government’s position is clear. I think the minister responded. The government is seeking to get the G8 countries to act to save lives of mothers and children throughout the world. We are not closing doors against any actions including, Mr. Speaker, contraception. But we do not want a debate here or elsewhere on abortion.”

Ah, there we are. Abortion, the trump card for support from the social conservatives – the exact demographic that Harper continually woos. As Paul Wells writes this week for Maclean’s:

“social conservatism offers Harper what he has always coveted: a sharply divided electorate where he owns a sizable chunk of the voters and the other parties fight over what’s left.”

But the problem Harper has had since he won his first election in 2006 is that ‘what’s left’ hasn’t fractured quite as quickly, or as fully, as he might have hoped, and he has yet to win a majority. Which means that he’s been forced to slightly curtail his legislative hopes, due to the opposition parties, bumbling as they have been at times. But each time Harper or his ministers are forced to backtrack, it’s often away from a position that placates the socially conservative base for which Harper has always been a champion.

In this case, the Harper government turned a relatively simple and long-supported issue of funding family planning in developing countries into a discussion about whether his government might support abortion. The confusion over Cannon’s statement (cynically) appears to have been almost intentional in that it immediately changed the conversation. In the end, Canada will still support contraception (as Harper stated), but on the way to finding that out, the Conservatives got to make a statement about their stance on abortion.

In a lot of ways, the whole thing was (perhaps unintentionally) quite savvy: The final message came not only with the fact that the Tories are actually fine with family planning that might include contraceptives, but with the implication – thanks to Harper’s statement in the House – that the opposition parties might want a debate on supporting abortion. By doing that, Harper has appealed not just to his socially conservative base, but to the centre-right – those voters who might in the past have voted Liberal.