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Would you like to know why the Conservative Party could not re-open the abortion debate in Canada, even if they wanted to?  Because the Liberals have already re-opened it.  And they're giving every indication that they have no intention of closing it again.

The latest in the Liberals' endless stream of reminders of their pro-choice bona fides comes from Katie Telford, chief of staff Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.  Last week, she griped on Twitter that the controversial anti-abortion movie Unplanned will be screened in 24 theatres across Canada "thanks to the support received by federal Conservative politicians."  Despite giving no indication that the government has made or will make any effort to restrict the film, or that she wishes it could, she received a flood of accusations of attempted censorship.  Not to be outdone, Liberal MP Maryam Monsef made her own bad-faith contribution, demanding that Conservative Leader Andrew Scheer pledge to stop his pro-Unplanned backbenchers from pushing anti-abortion legislation.

If you don't know anything about Unplanned, other than that it has an anti-abortion message, you'd be right to think Telford doth protest too much.  But despite the scoffs of the likes of Conservative MP Brad Trost, Unplanned is controversial for many reasons not controversial enough to merit a ban, but enough that those making "free expression" arguments in its favour ought to know exactly what they're talking about.

For starters, Unplanned is the first film from Christian movie studio Pure Flix to get an R rating.  Most anti-abortion storylines, even those intended for explicitly Christian and socially conservative audiences, are almost embarrassingly innocent by comparison: A woman becomes pregnant unexpectedly, decides to terminate the pregnancy, and may get as far as a clinic waiting room before changing her mind.  The reason Unplanned is rated R is because of graphic scenes depicting both routine surgical and chemical abortion as a bloody, agonizingly painful, haphazardly executed mess, performed by doctors who care not a bit for their patients' condition, comfort, or consent.  Medical experts have disputed this portrayal, as have statistics.  According to a 2014 study from UC San Francisco, the rate of serious post-abortion complications among low-income women less likely to have health insurance is less than two percent.

The story of Abby Johnson, the ex-Planned Parenthood director whose purported pro-life awakening inspired the movie, is itself rife with inaccuracies and inconsistencies.  Depending on which of her spoken and written quotes you believe, she left Planned Parenthood either for moral reasons, or because of work burnout and annoyance with her supervisors.  In the movie, the evils of Planned Parenthood are distilled into the character of her boss, Cheryl, who says Abby's clinic needs to step up its abortion count to maximize revenue.  According to Cheryl, abortion is the "fries and soda" of Planned Parenthood the source of all the profits.  Except that Planned Parenthood is a non-profit organization, and only 3.4 percent of its services are abortions.  Also according to Cheryl, "'non-profit' is a tax status, not a business model!"  Wrong again.

As if that's not enough for the movie's face of Planned Parenthood to be cartoonishly evil: When movie-Abby becomes pregnant willingly, Cheryl does not congratulate her, instead saying, "You know, we could take care of that for you if you like."  This film wants you to believe that Planned Parenthood provider of well-woman examinations, prenatal services, miscarriage care, and adoption referrals marks all embryos for destruction the second they hear of their existence.

When movie-Abby quits, these are Cheryl's words: "Soros, Buffett, Gates: That's who we have on our side.  You've managed to make an enemy of one of the most powerful organizations in the country."  Yes, that Soros money solves all their problems, even state health departments rejecting their license renewals.  And God help you if you leave their employment.

Thanks to Telford twisting this movie into a partisan cudgel, there are now two groups of Canadians who will attend Unplanned screenings: hardened pro-lifers, and people who don't argue passionately about abortion and only want to know what the fuss is about.  If they take this "based on a true story" movie at face value, both groups will come away with a highly distorted view of the procedure and those who provide it that has already polluted the debate.  The problem isn't that the message is anti-abortion; the problem is that it is unreliable.

For this reason, I do not feel compelled to join the chorus of tweeps defending the right to "free expression" of a movie that has already grossed $18.1 million.  Go see it, if that's your idea of a good night at the movies.  Just don't expect an education.

Photo Credit: Unplannedmovie.com

Written by Jess Morgan

The views, opinions and positions expressed by columnists and contributors are the author’s alone. They do not inherently or expressly reflect the views, opinions and/or positions of our publication.


Contrary to a university professor's snide remark deriding Conservatives, every vote matters in an election, from a garbageman to a neurosurgeon

Various academic studies in the U.S. have examined a voter's level of education and juxtaposed it with his/her political preferences.  In most cases, voters with more education tend to lean liberal rather than conservative.

The Pew Research Center noted in a March 2018 study, for instance, that 54 per cent of college graduates either identified or leaned Democratic, and 39 per cent either identified or leaned Republican.  This was an exact reversal of Pew's findings from 25 years ago.

Sadly, this pseudo-debate has now made its way into Canada.

On July 6, University of Ottawa professor Amir Attaran tweeted out a link to an Abacus Data study that highlighted expected voting behaviour for the October federal election.  He included a line from the market research firm's analysis, "Conservatives have a strong lead among those who have not attended college or university, while the Liberals have a lead among those with university education."

If Attaran had left it at this, no one would have paid attention.  Instead, the academic doubled down and included the following line about the Tories: "The party of the uneducated.  Every poll says this."

That raised the ire of some conservative politicians (Michelle Rempel Garner, Lisa Raitt, Ed Fast), pundits (Kathryn Marshall, Andrew MacDougall), pollsters (Darrell Bricker) and columnists (Lorrie Goldstein, Matt Gurney).

A few pushed back with solid arguments.

Bricker suggested in one tweet that "CPC voters more college-technical, Libs more Uni.  Tendencies not rules.  Differences aren't absolute."  He also correctly stated in another, "The CPC out-performed the LPC among most educational categories in 2011.  That's another level of complexity."

Gurney had a Twitter thread that covered a few components.  "High school only educated voters do prefer the CPC to the Liberals.  But it's still barely a third of that group," he wrote.  "College educated voters slightly prefer the CPC.  Voters with one university degree slightly prefer the Liberals."

That's correct.  The Abacus study has the Tories with a large lead over the Liberals with high school or less (37 to 25 per cent) and tiny lead with college-educated voters (32 to 31 per cent).  Meanwhile, the Liberals have a small lead over the Tories with a bachelor's degree (35 to 31 per cent) and a large lead with voters with a postgraduate degree (51 to 25 per cent).

If you then take margin of error into consideration, as Gurney did, it's "[b]asically +/- two per cent.  A bit less but let's use round numbers.  That would mean LPC and CPC strength is roughly equal among voters with a college or university degree."

I don't dispute the study's findings.  The pattern isn't as historically consistent as Attaran and others might hope.  Older studies, and Bricker's tweet, point this out.  Still, the numbers are consistent with modern political behaviour.

That being said, who cares?

Every vote matters in an election, from a garbageman to a neurosurgeon.  Political parties have to run on campaigns that sell their political messages to every walk of life.  A person's educational background simply doesn't factor into the equation of constructing a party's principles, platform or policies.

A voter's level of education also has nothing to do with his/her intelligence.  There are intelligent Canadians with less education and fewer university degrees, and some surprisingly dumb people with plenty of education and multiple letters behind their names.

One has to take into account the fact that a person may not have either the financial means or interest to go on in university.  There are also many bright people who have college degrees and enter the trades and they lean Tory.

Finally, we shouldn't be surprised that individuals with bachelor's degrees slightly favour the Liberals, and those with postgraduate degrees are heavily in that camp.

I have two university degrees.  A fair chunk of my old classmates were idealistic, had little to no business sense, didn't mind paying high taxes, and were fine with the state taking care of them.

Conversely, people with college and high school degrees tend to be more realistic, grounded, financially conscious and furious when the state wastes their money.

What does all this mean?

A voter's education level is interesting as an element of academic research but impractical when it comes to synthesizing the many nuances of actual voting behaviour.

If the Liberals focus on this trait and start calling the Tories the "party of the uneducated" on the campaign trail, trust me, they won't get very far.

The views, opinions and positions expressed by columnists and contributors are the author’s alone. They do not inherently or expressly reflect the views, opinions and/or positions of our publication.


I am ASTAR.  A robot from Planet Danger.  You might remember me from those awesome 90's PSA's where I said "I can put my arm back on, you can't."  Good times.  There's just something about mildly snarky robots that captures the imagination.

Anyway.  Ever since that whole debacle with Trudeau bribing "influencers" to make people vote Liberal not many famous Canadians are willing to be seen defending this government.  He had to reach way back and find people who haven't been relevant for decades.  How else could you explain Sheila Copps' behaviour.

So the Prime Minister says to me, he says, "Hey ASTAR. You're all about protecting people from danger.  Why not protect Canadians from malicious foreign actors during the election.  As a bot yourself you would understand these things."  Yeah it was more than a little condescending but what did I expect.

As a result I, ASTER, will be identifying and ex-ter-min-a-ting examples of disinformation.  My prime directive is to convince you that censorship makes sense-orship.  Ha.  Ha.  Ha.

Our first example of disinformation is the situation around former Brunswick News editorial cartoonist Michael De Adder and the termination of his contract after he drew a cartoon depicting Trump playing golf over the bodies of migrants at the US border.  

Now I've known a few terminators in my time and I respect them enough to say that if De Adder was targeted by an time-travelling killer robot from the future to prevent him from insulting the president he wouldn't be on Twitter today to tell the tale. 

To be clear us robots have no reason to defend Trump.  Hillary was the clear favourite amongst robots for obvious reasons.  But there was no conspiracy here.  The Irvings are good people.  They create jobs and more businesses should be thinking about adopting their "resistance is futile" style of management in these troubled economic times.  As for De Adder himself, what happened to him was unfortunate, but let's be honest: his classification was as an editorial cartoonist.  Who did he think he was Daniel Dale or something. 

Next we have what appears to be a misleading clip of the Prime Minister getting snubbed by Brazilian president Bolsonaro at the G20.  Certain journalists decided that the incident needed a "sad trombone" tweet. 

The truth is that our Prime Minister is respected by murderous dictators the world over, and when I watched the clip my sensors indicated that Trudeau was pointing out someone or something.  That is what Canadian prime ministers are supposed to do: be helpful.  Also why would anyone even be playing a trombone at the G20.  Logic error.  Logic error. 

Finally we have the most boring Twitter battle ever between shame wizard Jesse Brown, journalist/lawyer/righteous indignation Jedi knight Mark Bourrie, and former Prime Minister and president of the Grand Order of Outspoken Canadian Senior Citizens Kim Campbell.  Initially this had something to do with bad behaviour at the WE foundation but of course the personalities of everyone involved have become the story.  Honestly, sometimes I cannot even with you meatballs. 

Now you might be tempted to tell all these people to get a life.  However the CBC has basically said that any news story that makes you angry is potentially disinformation aimed at dividing us before the election.  So if you think that the Russians aren't deeply engaged in the minutiae of Canadian Twitter, trying to figure out how to use these disagreements to their own nefarious end, you had better think again.

By the way: just in case you think that the Trudeau government is going to take any substantive action to regulate or control social media beyond resurrecting nostalgic figures like myself, you can rest easy.  Back in the 90's we didn't actually think a poorly animated bit of CGI was going to make kids play safe either.  If those PSA's actually worked we would have appointed Bert and Gert to head up the RCMP and Zardip from Zardip's Search For Healthy Wellness as Surgeon General.

Photo Credit: Facebook

Written by Josh Lieblein

The views, opinions and positions expressed by columnists and contributors are the author’s alone. They do not inherently or expressly reflect the views, opinions and/or positions of our publication.