Rachael Harder, MP

REALity  Volume XXXVI  No. 11 November 2017

The House of Commons Status of Women Committee was established to promote the equality of all women. Yet, this committee does not support the equality of all women, but only those select women who accept an extreme feminist ideology.

The ugly underpinnings of this committee were exposed when the Liberal majority MPs walked out of the committee meeting because the newly nominated chairperson held different views on abortion.

Rachael Harder, a Member of Parliament for Lethbridge, was appointed by the Opposition Leader which is the normal practice in accordance with Parliamentary tradition. Other house committees also elect chairs from the official opposition: Public Accounts, Access to Information, Privacy and Ethics, and Government Operations and Estimates.  Ms. Harder is an intelligent, articulate and competent woman, yet she is discriminated against because she doesn’t hold the same views as some other women on the committee.

This deeply flawed committee, with a majority of Liberal MPs, requires all its members to march in lockstep with each other and not dare express opposing views. What kind of democracy is this?

The Liberal Members on the Status of Women Committee apparently do not understand that women differ because of their diverse economic, cultural, religious and educational backgrounds. No sane person believes that all men think alike.  So why do they hold such a peculiar standard for women?

These obtuse committee members claim that the Chair of the committee must support “reproductive choice” (abortion), on the basis that it is “the foundation of women’s equality”. Who says so?  This is not the view of most women who are not obsessed with this issue, as are feminists.  There is no woman’s “right” to abortion as neither the Supreme Court of Canada nor any UN Treaty has ever upheld this.

Committee Members Reject Pro-life Chairperson

The Status of Women Committee met a week later on October 3rd, 2017 at which time the Liberal MPs and the NDP MP on the committee voted against pro-life, Rachael Harder, as Chairperson.  Instead they nominated and elected another Conservative, Karen Vecchio (Elgin—Middlesex—London) as Chair of the committee. They did so, even though MP Vecchio refused the nomination, but, the pro-abortion committee members ignored Ms. Vecchio’s objections. They preferred Ms. Vecchio because she was “pro-choice”, voted for Bill C-16 (the Transgender bill). She did vote for the Cassie and Molly’s Law Bill in 2016 which was aimed at protecting unborn children in the womb when a crime of violence has occurred against the mother. Presumably, the feminist ideologues on the committee figured that Ms. Vecchio was the best of a bad lot, i.e., of the conservative MPs.

Liberal Action Rejected by the Media

When the Liberal MPs walked out of the committee meeting, Prime Minister Trudeau was all in favour of their decision stating that “someone with pro-life views cannot represent women’s rights”.

A joint statement by MPs Harder and Vecchio responded to this inane remark by Trudeau, stating:

For Justin Trudeau to say a Member of Parliament is unfit to hold a procedural position because she doesn’t agree with his personal position is ridiculous.

Surprisingly, the left-wing media whose customary role is to conduct a “love-in” with Justin Trudeau, criticized him for his and his MPs action to reject a pro-life Chairperson. The Globe and Mail, the Toronto Star, National Post and the Hill Times, for example, all left-wing newspapers, plus, astonishingly, the CBC, firmly took Trudeau and his MPs to task for their grandstanding at the Status of Women Committee meeting.

Trudeau and his MPs’ actions were highly discriminatory, and totally undemocratic. They did, however, show Trudeau’s extremist and totalitarian approach to government.

See also Press Release:

Discrimination exposed at the Status of Women Committee September 2017