The delay of M-312: What does it mean?

In my ongoing series on what to expect while we’re expecting Motion 312, here is some more information, specifically about the delay in the second hour of debate and the vote. 

You will recall that the second hour of debate had been scheduled for June 7 with a vote for June 13. All indicators were that this motion was an embarrassment to the government and Mr. Woodworth’s attempt to re-open the abortion debate would fail miserably. In fact, a June 6, 2012 article in the Globe and Mail reported that a vote in favour of the motion would be considered a vote against the Prime Minister and Tory MPs were being urged to quash it.

That article had likely already gone to print on the night of June 5 when word came out very late that night that the vote was going to be delayed. The word was Mr. Woodworth was having a family medical emergency. In an email to supporters he explained that his mother was ill and added, “The new arrangement has personal benefit for me.”

The “personal benefit” he receives from the delay is that he gets the summer to lobby. According to Miriam Rycroft, Policy and Stakeholder Relations Officer with the NDP, Mr. Woodworth’s office is trying to book meetings with some of the male MP’s about M-312. The request for meetings states that he wants “to better educate his colleagues on the real issues within the bill.” He goes on to say that, “some issues have been distorted by the media and are not well understood.”

I think Canadians understand what’s going on with your motion just fine, Mr. Woodworth. Do I have to excerpt Gordon O’Connor’s speech against the motion in the House again?

Woodworth may be hoping to gain momentum from anti-choice activities happening over the summer. The fetus-mobile blood and guts road show isn’t winning any friends from what we can see, so I think this effort will fail.

The note that he is specifically approaching male MPs is telling. Apparently, as with his GOP brethren to the south, Mr. Woodworth thinks men are better able to think straight about women’s bodies.

But having said all that, the process undertaken to delay the motion seems a bit convoluted and needs a second look. Normal protocol would be that the House Leader’s office would deal with scheduling private member’s business. But this is not how it worked in this case. Mr. Woodworth swapped his motion with a Liberal to get the timing changed, which seems to indicate his request to delay the motion was turned down by the House Leader’s office already.

I have always found it mystifying that in spite of the Prime Minister’s insistence that he wants this issue buried, it lives on. I have wondered before on this blog if this means Mr. Harper slipping a bit in his control-fest. Did Woodworth do an end run around him by going to the Liberals for the switch? Possibly. But it is also entirely possible that the Conservatives are putting on another show and doing an end run around us, using another private member’s bill to appease their base on an issue that is not supported by the majority of Canadians. With the delay, they make the Christian right wing anti-choice base of the party happy, while at the same time being able to deny responsibility for the delay and the continued presence of this issue in the public. Good Game. Looked at from their side, this delay has a bright side both for the MP and the PM. But looked at from the pro-choice side and the side of the vast majority of Canadians who are pro-choice, every day this motion hangs around is another day for us to remind ourselves that this government is perfectly willing to put women's rights up for debate, to play politics with our health and our security, and raise the spectre of recriminalization.

The important thing to know is that the anti's haven’t given up on this. For the pro-choice side, this means we can’t get complacent. Continue to email your MPs and get petitions signed, knit wombs, and plan your actions. It’s not over.

Meanwhile, I'm still reeling from the Omnibus Budget Bill. Talk about shenanigans. I wouldn't put anything past this government. If you aren't already, follow ShitHarperDid on Facebook and search the hashtags #denounceharper and #blackoutspeakout on Twitter for more about the C-38, F-35s and other letter number combinations that will get your head spinning and make you wonder what kind of tin-pot dictatorship Canada is becoming thanks to Mr. Harper. 

Motion M 312 debate and vote delayed

I'm not too sure what the story is yet, but it looks like the second hour of debate and the vote for M-312 are going to be delayed until the fall. ARCC and the Radical Handmaids seem to have the word on this. Check their websites for more.

We can only hope it's because the CONs decided to use the time to debate the Omnibus Bill. Ha! Good one. I crack myself up sometimes.  Honestly, why do I not have my own television show?

Seriously, it will give us time to focus on the dreaded budget Omnibus Bill, so go to BlackoutSpeakout and make some noise.

Crazy, Part 2 - M-312 about to be revisited

Only one week until we have to hear women's rights being debated in the House of Commons again, because apparently, women's rights are NOT secure in Canada. They can be pulled out from under us at any time by our government. I hope you've all got that particular message loud and clear, because that is the message. Any Time. Our rights could disappear. On the whim of a back-bencher. Yes, the fetus fetishists are at it again, and we will have to sit through another hour of "debate" on something that pretends not to be about abortion, but that everyone knows is about abortion. This is, apparently, a fine thing for the House to spend time on. Debating my rights. Because they are debatable. Women's rights are up for debate. In Canada. In 2012.


If you are not outraged, you are not paying attention. Let me explain it further. Yes, we can spend the time of the House on debating whether women will continue to have rights in Canada after June 13,  but apparently we can't spend this same time on the F-35 fiasco. We can't spend this time on any number of elements of the Omnibus Budget Bill, C-38. No, we won't break apart the "everything but the kitchen sink bill" to debate changes in Canada Pension, or numerous aspects of environmental protection, or the end of the Fair Wages Act, or even the demise of the lowly penny. None of this will have full debate in the House. No. But this shitty private member's bill that threatens the rights of women gets even more time. Canadians across this fine country should be out in the streets. In The Streets. Quebec students, show us the way.


In honour of this low point in our history, I will do the only thing I can think of that will not send me into a tailspin of a crazy-lady rant. I will include, at full length, the words of Gordon O'Connor, Conservative Whip, on M-312 from Hansard.  Why not Hedy or one of the other more typical quotables on such a topic? Because O'Connor's decimation of the bill was breathtaking, and has to irk the anti-choice followers of this blog more than the typical lefty complaints. So I throw Mr. O'Connor's words back at you while at the same time I ask with all sincerity, why, why are you following me on Twitter, you BSC anti-choicers? Why? Could you spend just a little of your zealotry on doing something about the Omnibus Budget Bill? I suspect this is too much to ask. I know, you have fetuses to save. Everything else has to wait. Even women's rights. But if you've come this far, read Mr. O'Connor's words again, and again, and again until they finally seep into your fetus-obsessed brains. He is, after all, on your side, at least in general terms. And thank you Mr. O'Connor for reminding us that there are moments of sanity in the Conservative Party, brief, (very brief) shining moments that give me hope, tiny glimpses of hope. Perhaps you can knock some sense into your colleagues over the Omnibus Budget Bill. Someone has to.


And now, without further delay, I bring you, Gordon O'Connor.

Hon. Gordon O'Connor (Minister of State and Chief Government Whip, CPC):

Madam Speaker, I offer my response to Motion No. 312. The issue before us, in essence, is on what it is to be human. This has been debated as long as man has existed. Scientists, theologians, philosophers and doctors have all offered opinions.

The House of Commons, however, is not a laboratory. It is not a house of faith, an academic setting or a hospital. It is a legislature, and a legislature deals with law, specifically, in this case, subsection 223(1) of the Criminal Code.

The purpose of Motion No. 312, which we are considering today, is to open to question the validity of subsection 223(1), which asserts that a child becomes a human being only at the moment of complete birth. If the legal definition of when one becomes a human being were to be adjusted so that a fetus is declared to be a legal person at some earlier stage of gestation, then the homicide laws would apply. As a necessary consequence, aborting fetal development anywhere in the potentially new adjusted period would be considered homicide. Thus the ultimate intention of this motion is to restrict abortions in Canada at some fetal development stage.

It should be noted that subsection 223(1) currently states that a child becomes a human being when it has completely proceeded in a living state from the body of its mother, irrespective of whether it has breathed, whether it has circulation separate from its mother, or whether the umbilical cord has been severed.

The effect of subsection 223(1) is to indicate the point in time at which homicide laws would apply. If someone intentionally injures a child before or during its birth such that it dies after becoming a human being, then the criminal law treats that as a homicide. This is set out in subsection 223(2).

According to section 238 of the Criminal Code, when an injury is inflicted on a child in the act of birth and that injury prevents the child from becoming a human being, it is an indictable offence and is punishable by a maximum penalty of life imprisonment.

I would note as well that this offence, killing an unborn child in the act of birth, section 238, does not apply if a person acts in good faith to preserve the life of the mother and in so doing causes the death of the unborn child. That is set out in subsection 238(2).

For clarity, I wish to point out that section 223(1) provides a legal test as to when Canada's criminal homicide laws apply to the death of a child. I say again, it is not a medical test, as Motion No. 312 suggests. It has always been part of Canada's criminal law, and it reflects the well-established legal principle that the law does not recognize a fetus or unborn child as a legal person, possessing rights separate from its mother, until it is born alive.

The Supreme Court of Canada has affirmed this interpretation for the purposes of the Criminal Code. The Supreme Court has also declared that the right to liberty guarantees a degree of personal autonomy over important decisions intimately affecting private life. The decision of whether or not to terminate a pregnancy is essentially a moral decision, and in a free and democratic society, the conscience of the individual must be paramount and take precedence over that of the state.

This does not mean, however, that abortion is unregulated in Canada. Abortion is regulated through provincial governments' responsibility for the delivery of health care services in conjunction with the medical profession. All provincial and territorial colleges of physicians and surgeons have declared that abortion is a medically necessary procedure, and delivery of this medical service is regulated accordingly.

Abortion is a very serious and long-lasting decision for women, and I want all women to continue to live in a society in which decisions on abortion can be made, one way or the other, with advice from family and a medical doctor and without the threat of legal consequences. I do not want women to go back to the previous era where some were forced to obtain abortions from illegal and medically dangerous sources. This should never happen in a civilized society.

Whether one accepts it or not, abortion is and always will be part of society. There will always be dire situations in which some women may have to choose the option of abortion. No matter how many laws some people may want government to institute against abortion, abortion cannot be eliminated. It is part of the human condition.

(1805)

I cannot understand why those who are adamantly opposed to abortion want to impose their beliefs on others by way of the Criminal Code. There is no law that says that a woman must have an abortion. No one is forcing those who oppose abortion to have one.

Within the free and democratic society of Canada, if one has a world view based on a personal moral code that is somewhat different from others, then live according to those views as long as they are within the current laws. On the other hand, citizens who are also living within the reasonable limits of our culture and who may not agree with another's particular moral principles should not be compelled to follow them by the force of a new law.

As we know, Motion No. 312 is sponsored by a private member, not the government. I can confirm that as a member of the Conservative caucus for nearly eight years, the Prime Minister has been consistent with his position on abortion. As early as 2005 at the Montreal convention and in every federal election platform since, he has stated that the Conservative government will not support any legislation to regulate abortion. While the issue may continue to be debated by some, as in the private member's motion here tonight, I state again that the government's position is clear: it will not reopen this debate.

I am sure we all recognize that the issue of abortion raises strongly held and divergent views within and outside Parliament. However, I firmly believe that each of us should be able to pursue our lifestyle as long as it is within the boundaries of law and does not interfere with the actions of others. Trying to amend the legal rules governing abortion, as is intended by this motion, will not improve the situation. It will only lead to increased conflict as the attempt is made to turn back the clock.

Society has moved on and I do not believe this proposal should proceed. As well, it is in opposition to our government's position. Accordingly I will not support Motion No. 312. I will vote against it and I recommend that others oppose it.

Is M-312 nothing but a Distraction from the Omnibus Budget Bill?

Sometimes it's hard to tell if Art is imitating Life or Life is imitating Art.

Canadian Playwright Michael Healey wrote a satirical play called "Proud" which is about a fictional Prime Minister who bears a remarkable resemblance to Stephen Harper. The Globe and Mail published an excerpt of "Proud" in which the PM asks a backbencher to put forward a pro-life bill to distract Canadians from his real agenda. Oh dear. As soon as I read it, I felt the truth of it. That's the great thing about fiction, how it can sometimes get at truth that, ironically, non-fiction can't reach. 

Meanwhile, in real life, here we are waiting for the second hour of debate on an anti-choice motion being floated by a backbencher, Motion M-312, while Stephen Harper pushes through Bill C-38, a bill that changes so much in Canada it boggles the mind. This bill has everything but the kitchen sink in it. Besides a budget which apparently is buried in it somewhere, here is a partial list of what
Bill C-38 includes: 

• massive changes to the Canadian Environmental Assessment Act. According to Davis LLP, this is "one of the most fundamental shifts in Canada’s regulatory and environmental policy in its history." This is the part of the bill that seems to have attracted the most attention. A close reading of this bill indicates the Harper government really has a hate on for anything "environmental."
• amendments to 60 different acts, including changes that weaken and undermine the Fisheries Act, the Navigable Waters Protection Act,  the Energy Board Act, the Species at Risk Act, and the Nuclear Safety Control Act (the latter two described in earlier links)
• cuts to water programs and the monitoring of effluent. See the Green Party for more on this.
• the end of the National Roundtable on the Environment and the Economy
• severe cuts to ecological oversight and research at Parks Canada and many cultural and heritage programs. As one Parks employee put it in an article by Anne McIlroy, this is a "lobotomy" of the parks system.
• the end of the National Roundtable on the Environment and the Economy
• the end of several acts including the Fair Wages and Hours of Work Act
• cuts to workers' eligibility for Employment Insurance. If this passes, if a worker on EI won't take a job, any job, that the Minister of Human Resources deems suitable for them, they will no longer receive benefits. In the past, workers have been able to look for work in their field and work at a comparable salary to what they had. Laid off from a high tech firm as a software developer? Get used to the phrase, "Would you like fries with that?"
• the removal of independent oversight from 12 key government agencies—including the Northern Pipeline Agency, the Canadian Food Inspection Agency and the Canada Revenue Agency
• changes that give final say over pipeline project approvals to Conservative cabinet ministers regardless of environmental impacts
• changes that exclude concerned citizens from assessments of major projects like the Enbridge pipeline
• the end of access to primary health care for refugee claimants
• the implementation of controversial changes to pension eligibility, meaning Canadians will not retire until age 67
• implementation of yet another round of cuts into the CBC, this after the CBC has already undergone one round of cuts, and ironically, at a time when the organization seems to be doing quite well with the public according to former president, Richard Stursberg
• the end of audits of internal government departments while $8M is added to audit capacity to harass charities suspected of political advocacy
• changes the regulations in agriculture, including how downer cows are assessed and whether they can be put back into the food system. In the past dead cows were excluded from the food chain. Now, apparently, someone will glance at them and decide it they are fit to eat, throw them in the back of a truck and add them to the live cows that go into the slaughterhouses. The bill paves the way for private contractors to perform food safety inspections. This change particularly grossed me out. I might become a vegetarian after all.

As Andrew Coyne recently wrote in the National Post, "Omnibus bills are not unknown.... But lately the practice has been to throw together all manner of bills involving wholly different responsibilities of government in one all-purpose “budget implementation” bill, and force MPs to vote up or down on the lot. While the 2012 budget implementation bill is hardly the first in this tradition, the scale and scope is on a level not previously seen, or tolerated." He goes on to say, "There is no common thread that runs between [items in the bill], no overarching principle; they represent not a single act of policy, but a sort of compulsory buffet."

There has been critique, of course. Elizabeth May calls it "The Environmental Destruction Act." Many are noting how the bill is bad for democracy because it rolls so much into one bill, limits the time for debate, obfuscates the individual issues by slipping them into a bill too long to really comprehend, that it guts environmental protection and so on. The NDP tried to get the bill split up so some of these radical changes could be considered individually, but the CONs have a majority, so this will not happen.

But Canadians are all sleeping through this.

In a recent column, Richard Poplak writes that with Omnibus Bill C-38, we are at the cusp of a moment in history. Canadians have to decide if they will protest this bill, a bill that is sure to pass with a majority CON government. As Poplak says, "Good policies? Bad policies? Doesn't matter. Properly, each of those items should be sent to committees and considered individually. That's how our system is designed to work. What the Conservatives have engineered isn't illegal, merely rotten - another in a long line of tricks defiling the democratic process." Proroguing Parliament comes to mind. While I personally agree with ending the production of the penny (another item in this bill), even this should see some debate. That's what Parliament is for. But in Harper's government, a government allergic to transparency according to Poplak, our Parliamentary tradition of debating key public issues is dead.

Meanwhile, what is being debated? Motion 312. A distraction, for sure. And we are protesting it with all of our strength and capacity. And protest it we must, because if I don't have control of my body, little else matters. But, if the CONs really wanted a personhood bill, they would have thrown it in with C-38. Just sayin'. That is why I am convinced that M-312 is exactly what Healey describes in "Proud," an attempt to distract us from the real agenda.

So much to protest, so little time.

And here's another meanwhile. Meanwhile, in Quebec, the students protest tuition increases. As Poplak notes, this is one of the biggest protests we've ever seen in Canada, in a province with a history of protest. Now going far beyond the original issue, the protest has become a more broad scale renunciation of the Charest's government attempts to infringe on personal freedoms and the right to express dissent. Quebec students are showing us the way.

We need to Occupy this.


Go petitions has a sad little petition with about a hundred signatures on it right now. Avaaz has one that is attempting to reach 500. Sad. Change.org has one that hasn't met 200 names yet. Honestly, what is wrong with us?   Here's a link to the Green Party's petition, one that you print, sign and send in. Maybe they are doing better. And anyway, hard copy petitions mean more in Parliament, so Go Green. But for heaven's sake, protest this bill. If you have time to protest M-312, take an extra minute to do something about Bill C-38. Please. It matters.

Now, to finish the story of Healey and "Proud." When Tarragon theatre in Toronto, a theatre to which Healey had been playwright-in-residence for eleven years, refused to produce the play on the grounds that it may be libellous and defamatory to the real Prime Minister, Healey resigned from Tarragon. As a recent article in the Globe and Mail described the situation, "A playwright writes a play about a famously controlling prime minister with a reputation for punishing people who cross him, only to have the play refused by producers who fear being punished by the famously controlling prime minister."

I hope  Michael Healey finds the cash to produce "Proud." May I be so bold to suggest that like me, when you can't find a producer, DIY. Sometimes, it's the only way to get your work out there. I think this is a play Canadians need to see and I hope I get the opportunity to see it.

While Healey works on that, the rest of us can put together some DIY activism. Get busy.

Personhood Motion 312 Action Alert

As you all are aware, Motion 312, the "Women Can't Be Trusted" motion, is going for debate in the House April 26. Here is some vital information you can share via twitter and facebook, or through any means you have to get the word out.

ARCC's action alert page lists a whole host of activities. First of all, sign the petition.

I've done that, and I'll let you know what else I've done regarding these alerts. My knitting is on its way to Ottawa already via the Womb Swarm Parliament group listed in the action. As you can see, I'm a terrible knitter, but who cares? Go on to their site to see some great knitted uteri from people who know what they are doing. But as far as my effort goes, it's the thought that counts, and I love the zipper. The piece is titled "Keep Out" and the materials are yarn, metal zipper, cotton thread, wooden BBQ skewer, poster board and sharpie. I knitted this with the Revolutionary Knitters one night here in Calgary, and I'm just happy they exist.

I've been Telling Anti-Choice MPs Everything, a great effort that makes over-sharing useful. They have the 411 on my menopausal menstrual inconsistencies, my last mammogram, and so on. I've joined forces with the Radical Handmaids in spirit, even though I can't be physically present for their actions.

And, how can you not love the outfits. I have spread the word (oh, have I spread the word) and I am a member of Abortion Rights Coalition of Canada, supporting their actions with cold hard cash.

Here in Alberta, we're fighting a war on a dual front, as are our sisters in New Brunswick and PEI. This is what it's going to be like all over Canada if the radical right get to move their anti-woman agenda forward.

We have to remember our best weapon, and that's humour. The anti-choice folks aren't funny. So create your actions and move your point of view forward.



And here is the funniest thing I've ever seen about personhood bills. See The Daily Show on Personhood. It's the best.
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The Abortion Monologues is available as an e-book at Smashwords and via your favourite e-book distributors like Kobo, Kindle and iBooks. Check it out. Print copies are still available back at the website via paypal until they run out. This is the last print run.