It is approximately day seventy of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and Russian forces appear to be storming the steel plant in Mariupol, after a handful of civilians were evacuated and made it to Kyiv-controlled areas. As well, UK prime minister Boris Johnson addressed the Ukrainian parliament (and I can’t wait for the usual suspects in this country to start demanding Justin Trudeau to do the same, just because).
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky tells the #WSJCEOCouncil that companies still doing business in Russia are supporting its “war machine” https://t.co/w7KyCbkvXM pic.twitter.com/dcbtkfsx91
— The Wall Street Journal (@WSJ) May 3, 2022
Closer to home, that US Supreme Court leak about the potential overturning of their abortion jurisprudence has galvanized politicians in Canada in a number of ways. For the Bloc, they decided to engage in mischief by moving a unanimous consent motion after Question Period about a woman’s right to choose, which was explicitly designed to box the Conservatives into a corner, and they dutifully marched into it—right after Candice Bergen sent out orders to the caucus not to discuss it. Of course, several MPs made their comments on their way into the West Block, while most of the leadership candidates made their feelings known.
All Canadians—especially all Canadian women who care about a woman’s right to choose—need to be active, vigilant, and speak out.
See my comments from today: pic.twitter.com/f2rxQOw6JP
— Chrystia Freeland (@cafreeland) May 3, 2022
The unspoken part of this is that under the Conservative government, abortion access was not a precondition for Canada Health Transfers, and provinces who restricted access faced no clawbacks. They do (theoretically) under this government (but the pandemic had them refund them). https://t.co/hXXxJ8auhC
— Dale Smith (@journo_dale) May 3, 2022
This raises questions as to whether this could happen in Canada, and it’s theoretically possible, but not under the current configuration of the Supreme Court of Canada. Of course, the more likely course is for a future government to attempt to criminalise it via the Criminal Code, which they have been attempting to in piecemeal form, either via “sex-selective abortion” legislation, or bills that give rights to foetuses, which undermines the Canadian legal jurisprudence that rights begin at birth. The bigger problem in Canada is uneven access, whether between rural and urban areas within a province, or between provinces, particularly in places like New Brunswick and PEI, and the fact that the federal government has been fairly impotent when it comes to clawbacks of Canada Health Transfers related to not providing this service (which Conservatives don’t insist on federally, but Liberals do, when they are in power). I also think it’s an issue that this “feminist federal government” simply refunded the clawbacks from New Brunswick when the pandemic began so that they couldn’t be cast as the bad guy, instead of being seen to stand up for principles and for access. And lo, we may soon need to be providing access to Americans who come to Canada for the procedure, and that may cause capacity challenges, depending on the province. So we have our challenges, but they’re different ones from the US.
Something to note in particular was how our feminist federal government simply repaid the clawbacks they took from New Brunswick’s health transfers when COVID hit so that they didn’t look like the bad guy, rather than like they were sticking to their principles.
— Dale Smith (@journo_dale) May 3, 2022