Garry Rohr, director of an organization called Families for Day, is quite open about the fact that it’s Stockwell Day’s profile as a pro-family, pro-life, evangelical Christian candidate that makes him attractive. “Although,” he says, “if you took all that away, he would still be the best candidate—he’s had experience in a governing party, he’s lived in different regions of the country, he speaks both official languages, and he’s a solid fiscal conservative.”1
Readers unfamiliar with Stockwell Day and, indeed, with Canada’s political system may need a brief history lesson to understand how Day, a 50-year-old former lay pastor and administrator of a Christian school, is poised to compete for the prime minister’s job.
Ever since Canada became a nation in 1867, two political parties—the Liberals and Conservatives—have dominated federal governments. The two parties represent exactly what their names imply—the Liberals are a slightly left-of-center party, the Conservatives slightly right-of-center. “Slightly” is a significant word here, as both are essentially moderate, centrist parties.
In Canada, voters don’t choose their prime minister in a separate vote, as Americans do for their president. On Election Day everyone votes in their local district, or riding, for a local representative.
The party that elects the most representatives, or “holds the most seats” in Parliament, forms the government. The leader of that party automatically becomes the prime minister. That means that the leader of any major political party is a very powerful person.
And until recently there were only two major political parties. Since 1921 only Liberals and Conservatives have held the post of prime minister. Other political parties have sprung up, but without much support. The exception has been the New Democratic Party, whose left-wing social democratic policies attracted enough voters to make them the third-largest party in Parliament, but never enough to form the nation’s government.
That’s the way the Canadian political landscape has looked for decades. But all that has now changed radically.
In the 1993 Federal election the venerable Conservative party, which had ruled for the past eight years under prime minister Brian Mulroney, was virtually wiped out. Left with only two of the almost 300 seats in Parliament, the party was dealt a crushing blow from which it still struggles to recover (it currently holds 15 seats).
The time was ripe for a new party to arise on the right. And the Reform Party, with its leader Preston Manning, was ready. Reform’s policies were well to the right of the old Conservative Party. Reform was a populist Western Canadian party that supported a conservative fiscal policy—lower taxes, debt reduction—and a conservative social policy that won support from advocates of “family values.” Enough Canadians found Reform an attractive option for the party to win 52 seats in 1993 and 60 in the 1997 election. Since 1997 Reform has been Canada’s official Opposition party. The Liberals under Jean Chrétien form the government, and the remaining seats are held by the Bloc Québéois, a separatist party from the French province of Quebec, the Conservatives, and the New Democrats.
The Reform Party of 1997 had come farther than anyone believed possible in a few short years. But their support ended at the Manitoba-Ontario border—they were still basically a western party, and it’s virtually impossible for any party to form Canada’s government if it doesn’t have the support of the whole country.
In 1999 Preston Manning decided to appeal to the Conservative Party to join him in a “Unite-the-Right” coalition. The official Conservative Party wasn’t interested, but many individual party members and supporters were. In 2000 the Reform Party reshaped itself into the Canadian Alliance Party. And in a surprise move the party rejected Preston Manning in favor of the younger, more charismatic Stockwell Day.
Day’s views aren’t actually much more right-wing than Manning’s were. Both men are not only fiscal and social conservatives, but avowed fundamentalist Christians who are pro-life, oppose homosexual marriage, and support capital punishment. Yet Preston Manning had “achieved a status where he [could] hold controversial positions without generating much controversy.”2 By contrast, small-L liberals in Canada, led by the media, are frightened by Stockwell Day and the Canadian Alliance. Macleans, the national news magazine, put Day’s face on its cover with the bold headline “How Scary?”
A better question might be “Why so scary?” Perhaps it’s because the Alliance under Day poses a threat that the Reform Party under Manning never did. People are starting to realize that is new right-wing party might actually form a government someday.
Even the most enthusiastic Alliance supporters concede that goal is still a ways off. In the November 2000 federal election, the Alliance under Stockwell day didn’t make the kind of gains in central and eastern Canada that it had hoped for. Though the Alliance increased its number of seats to 66, Jean Chrétien’s Liberals still hold a strong majority in the government. Stockwell Day and the Alliance now have four years on the Opposition side of the House of Commons—years in which Day can practice his parliamentary skills, figure out how to appeal to voters in Ontario and east, and try to calm the fears of those Canadians who still find the prospect of a fundamentalist Christian prime minster “scary.”
In a speech entitled “Conservatism in Contemporary Canadian Politics,” in which he laid out his platform of social conservative beliefs, Day addressed the issue of religion head-on. “I am a person of religious faith,” he told the Fourth Annual National Conference of Civitas. “Like 84 percent of Canadians, I believe in God. Some people react as though having religious beliefs somehow disqualifies you from holding public office . . . . I would like to ask those who are always accusing religious believers of being intolerant how tolerant they are of people who hold these beliefs . . . . The real intolerance in Canadian society is shown by those who would deny people of faith the right to participate in public life.”3
Day’s willingness to speak openly about his religious convictions as well as his endorsement of a pro-life, social conservative agenda, has earned him widespread respect and support from Christian groups, who until now have not traditionally been an active force in Canadian politics.
Families for Day is one group that worked to publicize Day’s message and helped him win the Alliance leadership. “We contacted a number of pro-family organizations,” director Garry Rohr says, identifying “the Citizens’ Research Institute, local chapters of the Canada Family Action Coalition, local pro-life groups . . . . Our mandate was to get new people involved in the Alliance, and to draw attention to Day’s pro-family track record among existing Alliance members. And we greatly exceeded our expectations,” says Rohr.4 Families for Day helped Day’s campaign by distributing his brochures and Alliance membership cards, since only party members were able to vote for the new leader. Ron Beyer, a Pentecostal minister and president of the Canada Family Action Coalition, took time off from the CFAC to help organize Families for Day.
This kind of interest and involvement by Christians and Christian groups is something new on the political scene in Canada. Religion has never played the kind of center-stage role in Canadian politics that it has in the U.S. Canadians have never showed great interest in whether a prime minister attends church regularly or in how his religious convictions might affect his policies. Current prime minister Jean Chrétien “said he keeps his religion ‘separate from politics’ even though he still considers himself ‘a good Catholic’ in his personal life.”5 His attitude is typical of Canadian political leaders. The fact that Canada’s longest-serving prime minister, Mackenzie King, was a practicing spiritualist who attended séances didn’t excite much comment among Canadian Christians back in the 1930s. When Pierre Trudeau declared in the 1970s that “the state has no place in the bedrooms of the nation,” he might have said the same about the nation’s churches, too.
But that arm’s-length relationship between religion and politics is changing in Canada, and Stockwell Day and the Canadian Alliance are a big part of that change. Commenting on Day’s unwillingness to do an interview on Sunday because he observes it as his day of rest, Day supporter Gerald Chipeur, a lawyer, points out, “This is something new in Canadian politics. Stockwell Day would be the first Canadian prime minister since, probably, R. B. Bennett [in the 1930s] to make his religion a part of his everyday life.”6
Many Canadians wonder whether the new activism on the right means that Canada will begin to imitate the U.S., with conservative Christians playing a major role in politics.
Garry Rohr agrees that Day’s successful bid for the Alliance leadership may well be the beginning of a “Religious Right” movement in Canadian politics, and as far as he’s concerned, that’s something to be welcomed. “Christians in this country are getting so fed up with the federal Liberal Party,” he says. “Do you know what the number one reason we were given for people joining the Alliance was? The federal government’s inactivity on the child pornography case. People were disgusted that the government didn’t take action. The time for change has come, and the combination of Stockwell Day and the Alliance Party is the best agent for that change.
“Most grassroots Canadians agree with Alliance policies,” says Rohr, who is himself seeking nomination as an Alliance candidate in the next federal election. He hopes to see more Christians joining and supporting the Alliance, and was encouraged when the editor of a major Catholic magazine endorsed the Alliance: “He was very disturbed by Jean Chretien’s statement that the Liberal Party includes pro-choice supporters.”7
The abortion issue, so crucial to conservative Christians, gives a good example of how Stockwell Day and the Canadian Alliance would handle potentially explosive issues. Day freely admits that he, like most of his supporters, is pro-life and would personally favor decriminalizing abortion, but, he says, “I would not seek to impose my views on the Canadian people. I would want issues such as these to be determined freely and democratically by the people, either through a referendum initiated by Canadians or a free vote of their representatives in the House of Commons. Debates like this need to be conducted with the greatest possible respect for democracy and the views of others, without the angry and harsh rhetoric that too often prevents serious democratic debate on moral questions.”
It’s not surprising that many on the left of the political spectrum, including feminist and gay-rights groups, see Stockwell Day as a potential threat. But does his leadership of the Alliance pose a threat to those who, like Day himself, want the right to practice their own religion—whatever it may be? Would a prime minister who is unabashedly an evangelical Christian prove a threat to the religious liberty of those who don’t share his views?
Stockwell Day says no. “I do not seek, nor do other persons of faith I know seek, to impose their spiritual beliefs on anybody else. As a conservative I have no intention of making my religion someone else’s law. But neither is it possible to demand that the convictions I express on Sunday should have nothing to do with the way I live my life the other six days of the week. In other words, I believe in the separation of church and state, but am opposed to any suggestion that citizens separate themselves from their beliefs in order to participate in the government of their state.”
Under Stockwell Day, the Alliance is actively recruiting the support of people of faith other than conservative Christians—most notably Jews and Muslims, who are attracted by Day’s commitment to tax breaks for parents who send their children to religious schools. Speaking at a dinner with Jewish friends of the Alliance, Day demonstrated his familiarity with the Torah and his commitment to Judeo-Christian values impressively enough that during the question-and- answer time after the meeting, one listener jokingly asked whether Day would be interested in applying to fill the vacant position of rabbi at the listener’s synagogue.
When another Jewish listener more seriously questioned him on the “redneck factor”—the perception that the mostly western Alliance members are intolerant of religious and cultural differences—Day challenged the audience to look at his caucus (the Alliance members who actually hold seats in Canada’s Parliament). The Alliance caucus, he claimed, is the most ethnically and religiously diverse in Canada.
One member of that caucus, Day’s leadership campaign chair Jason Kenney, says that in the next election the Alliance will have “Jewish candidates, Muslim candidates, candidates from every conceivable ethnic background.”8
Is the Alliance’s commitment to diversity real enough to erase the fears of those who see a threat to religious liberty in any political leader who boldly declares his religious convictions? Only time will tell.
Footnotes
1 Garry Rohr, interview with author, August 2000.
2 John Geddes, “The Scare Factor,” Macleans, July 10, 2000, p. 18.
3 D’Arcy Jenish, “The Day Comes to Ottawa,” Macleans, July 24, 2000, p. 17.
4 Rohr.
5 Interview in Ottawa Citizen, quoted in John Geddes “New Might on the Right,” Macleans, September 11, 2000, p. 19.
6 Gerald Chipeur, interview with author, September 2000.
7 Rohr.
8 Geddes, p. 21.
Trudy J. Morgan-Cole, a freelance writer living in St. John's, Newfoundland, Canada, is a regular contributor.
AN INSULT TO CHRISTIANS
Stockwell Day did not win the post of prime minister in the Canadian election held last year. However, the real loser of the election was every person of religious faith in Canada. For the first time in Canadian history a political leader was attacked not for his political beliefs, but for his religious convictions. Many are interpreting Mr. Chretien’s victory as open season on Christians.
The Prime Minister started the attack by telling reporters that being prime minister was a seven-day-a-week job “including Sunday,” a reference to Mr. Day’s decision to refrain from campaigning on Sunday in order to attend church and spend time with his family.
The government-owned television network (CBC) then entered the fray by ridiculing Mr. Day’s belief in creation. In a major attack documentary called “The Fundamental Day,” a CBC reporter expressed shock that a Canadian political leader could believe that the world is thousands, not millions of years old; that Adam and Eve were real people; and that dinosaurs and humans coexisted on the planet. One of the Prime Minister’s strategists even went on national television a few days later with a stuffed Barney doll to mock Mr. Day’s creationist views.
But the worst example of this over-the-top attack on Mr. Day’s religion was made by Chretien Cabinet Minister Hedy Fry, herself a member of the Roman Catholic Church. She declared that Mr. Day’s belief that “Jesus Christ is the God of the whole universe” was “an insult to every Muslim, Buddhist, Sikh—everybody else who believes in other religions.”
While many Muslim, Jewish, and evangelical Christian groups issued press releases expressing shock at these religious attacks on a political leader, many remained silent—afraid of retribution.
Stockwell Day was urged to respond in kind to these vicious personal religious attacks. Instead, he affirmed his Christian faith and his conviction that while church and state should be separate, a political leader should not have to separate himself from his faith in order to participate in public service.
Gerald Chipeur is a lawyer in Calgary, Alberta, Canada.
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