Western Standard - May 19, 2026


March for Life organizers accuse Conservatives of silencing pro-life MPs

Mentioned
Pierre Poilievre Stephen Harper Andrew Scheer Erin O'Toole Peter McKay Mark Carney John Brennan Derek Jack
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Episode Stats


Length

10 minutes

Words per minute

164.34

Word count

1,752

Sentence count

83

Harmful content

Misogyny

1

sentences flagged

Toxicity

1

sentences flagged

Hate speech

14

sentences flagged


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

In this episode, we discuss the 29th annual National March for Life, a pro-life rally that takes place in Toronto, Canada on March 31st, where pro-lifers gathered to demand legal protection for pre-born children in the womb.

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Misogyny classifications generated with MilaNLProc/bert-base-uncased-ear-misogyny .
Toxicity classifications generated with s-nlp/roberta_toxicity_classifier .
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
Hosts, guests, and mentioned names generated with spaCy (en_core_web_sm), reconciled against Wikidata.
00:00:00.000 tell me about the history of the event absolutely so in 1969 there was a bill
00:00:20.000 that was passed called the omnibus bill where they wove abortion into it and
00:00:23.680 And since that day, we've had 5 million pre-born humans killed by abortion.
00:00:31.740 And in our opinion, it's the greatest human rights violation of our times.
00:00:36.800 And that's why we show up here year after year to demand legal protection for pre-born children in the womb.
00:00:44.120 And we've been showing up for 29 years now.
00:00:46.400 This is our 29th annual National March for Life.
00:00:48.800 And we're going to continue to show up here until the government listens to Canadians
00:00:52.940 and gives us what we want, which is legal protection for human life from the moment of conception.
00:00:59.900 Right now, we have this liberal government led by Prime Minister Mark Carney,
00:01:05.200 who interestingly holds himself out as a committed Catholic,
00:01:09.920 and yet he supports what he calls a woman's right to choose.
00:01:12.880 What is that? Let's unpack that. What does he mean by a woman's right to choose?
00:01:15.960 Well, first of all, there is no right in Canada to kill another person. 0.91
00:01:20.160 There is no right for a woman just to go and kill her baby.
00:01:22.780 There are no laws in Canada governing abortion at all.
00:01:25.840 There was no law that was ever passed in Parliament.
00:01:28.900 There's nothing in the Charter of Rights and Freedoms.
00:01:31.500 In fact, the Charter says everyone has the right to life.
00:01:36.100 Now, I spoke to one of your colleagues about the representation and engagement with Conservatives again.
00:01:40.780 and on the topic, do you believe that years past you had more or less engagement?
00:01:47.140 And how would you view that in terms of leadership that can serve the party
00:01:50.080 under successive leaders Andrew Scheer, Aaron O'Toole, Pierre Polyev?
00:01:54.380 Which among them are perhaps more likely to muzzle or take MPs out of this kind of photo?
00:02:00.880 Yeah, unfortunately, it has deteriorated since Stephen Harper's third term.
00:02:08.100 So kind of since I've been in the pro-life movement and working at Campaign Life Coalition,
00:02:13.960 you know, when pro-life MPs, backbench MPs had the most freedom to say what they wanted
00:02:18.840 without fear of being slammed by the leader was actually under Stephen Harper.
00:02:22.560 His first two terms, he took a very hands-off approach.
00:02:25.440 He respected party democracy, and MPs would bring forward pro-life bills like Rod Bernouge
00:02:33.860 in Manitoba brought forward an abortion coercion bill.
00:02:39.020 There were some others as well.
00:02:40.420 And he just, he respected their freedom to do so,
00:02:45.040 to represent their constituents and what was important to them.
00:02:48.820 And after Stephen Harper, I think in part because of the fear of the media,
00:02:54.180 successive leaders of the Conservative Party clamped down on them
00:02:58.360 and told them to keep quiet, not raise these issues.
00:03:01.740 So that MP freedom has deteriorated, and that's really sad,
00:03:09.300 and we hope it will be restored with a future leader.
00:03:12.000 Unfortunately, Pierre Poiliev is much the same.
00:03:15.180 He doesn't allow freedom for MPs to speak on these issues.
00:03:18.420 Sometimes they do, but sometimes they also get slapped down for speaking up.
00:03:25.200 So you accused Pierre Poiliev of censorship then?
00:03:28.540 Yeah, yeah, we've seen that happen.
00:03:31.740 Last question for you, Jack.
00:03:34.000 This rally, as well as a once-in-a-year rally,
00:03:37.200 do you expect any counter-protest demonstrations?
00:03:41.800 Do you, I mean, what's different this year?
00:03:43.920 I saw that there were a few counter-demonstrators as well.
00:03:46.980 Do you believe that society is moving away or towards your direction?
00:03:52.060 In terms of the counter-protesters, I don't think there's many.
00:03:56.660 We heard from the police, they tipped us off,
00:03:58.860 that there was a group of pro-abortion demonstrators.
00:04:01.740 trying to form, but the police didn't expect it would be more than 100 people. So it shouldn't
00:04:07.260 be a big presence. Yeah, I think things are moving in our direction with the younger people. The
00:04:12.540 younger generations are more pro-life than their parents. You know, the boomers are more pro-choice,
00:04:19.240 more pro-abortion. The children of the newer generations, they have the advantage of the 0.98
00:04:27.060 internet. They have the advantage of seeing what children in the womb look like, what babies in
00:04:31.600 womb look like it's not a mystery they they know it they can they can see ultrasound photos and
00:04:36.980 videos and 4d ultrasounds uh so it's uh to most young people they understand that a baby in the
00:04:44.960 womb is a human being and it's wrong to kill him or her um so and we see more young people coming
00:04:52.180 into the pro-life movement every year as well so it's growing and it's greening and that is
00:04:57.260 absolutely a cause for hope. Lastly, is Canada's growing demographic with immigrants changing 1.00
00:05:02.220 things at all in your favor? In fact, yes. A lot of the immigrants, I think the liberals 1.00
00:05:10.300 bring so many such high levels of immigration into Canada, thinking that they're going to be 0.92
00:05:15.140 automatic liberal voters. But the reality is that most of them come from very socially
00:05:21.240 conservative countries that value life they value babies they value family um they don't believe in
00:05:28.000 in throwing away their elderly their grandparents and uh and killing them uh so uh you know they're 0.78
00:05:35.160 they're it's not a big task uh i don't believe in future to bring more and more of new canadians
00:05:41.780 and immigrants into the pro-life movement so tell me a little bit about the link of the issues
00:05:46.060 There's Christ as king, free Palestine, pro-life.
00:05:48.980 Tell me about yourself.
00:05:50.620 I'm a Christian. 1.00
00:05:53.660 Christians should oppose genocide.
00:05:55.820 Christians should be pro-life.
00:05:57.920 If you call yourself pro-life and you're pro-genocide,
00:06:02.040 I think you're very confused.
00:06:06.100 I'm against globalism.
00:06:07.860 I'm against neo-Marxism or neo-Bolshevism.
00:06:12.340 And these are all facets of neo-Marxism.
00:06:16.060 So the people here are focused on one issue, and I agree with them on that issue,
00:06:21.600 but I think abortion is almost a symptom of the wider problem, 0.93
00:06:27.600 that people aren't Christian anymore,
00:06:30.220 that moral people are basically shunned from polite society or lose their jobs.
00:06:36.840 And it's not just about abortion for me, and so that's why I have this on my sign.
00:06:42.240 Also, the Palestine issue, I think a lot of churches are signing off on that 0.86
00:06:48.140 because they're so pro-Zionist, and I think it's disgusting. 1.00
00:06:52.400 So that's why that's on my sign. 0.99
00:06:54.640 You have a PPC hat on.
00:06:56.580 Tell me about your views on the leadership of the Conservative Party
00:06:58.820 and the People's Party of Canada.
00:07:01.500 Well, Pierre Polievre is a joke.
00:07:03.500 I mean, he's controlled opposition.
00:07:05.220 He's just a liberal.
00:07:07.540 He just wants to slow things down, but he's not real opposition.
00:07:11.620 Max Bernier I support him a hundred percent I think the PPC platform is
00:07:17.800 wonderful he's a little more libertarian than I am I'm a little more nationalist
00:07:22.960 but he's compromised a lot with the nationalist wing of the party and so I
00:07:28.840 support him a hundred percent he would probably disavow some of the edgier
00:07:33.160 things that I have to say but that's okay so Derek what brings you to the hill
00:07:37.780 today uh so the march for life is an important event annually in ottawa that i that i typically
00:07:42.920 attend and of course i promote life and i am pro-life and i'm happy to be here to uh to support
00:07:49.020 the march you ran for leadership the federal conservative party how do you view the current
00:07:53.540 leadership as relation to this issue uh the the current conservative party is socially liberal
00:08:00.580 and economically conservative um and so they're not and you know i don't say that as an insult i
00:08:06.620 think that's an accurate you know reflection of where they're at but they're they're not really
00:08:11.240 big on the pro-life issue there are obviously mps who are pro-life but they don't this is a bad news
00:08:18.240 day for them if they get a lot of mps out here so i my guess is behind the scenes they are
00:08:22.680 encouraging people not to attend that would be my guess you ran alongside as well one of your
00:08:28.080 competitors at the time leslie lewis who is known to be pro-life and socially conservative as well
00:08:33.560 Do you view that someone like her has prospects of leadership of the future of the party?
00:08:38.660 Should Pierre resign in the future?
00:08:40.820 It's always possible.
00:08:41.840 I mean, when you're an MP in a party, there's pressure that's put on you to kind of toe the party line.
00:08:49.360 But, you know, Lesley may run again.
00:08:51.420 It's possible.
00:08:52.220 And I wish her the best if she does.
00:08:55.100 When it comes to health care issues, be it abortion, MAID, elsewhere, there is a federal and also a provincial component.
00:09:00.880 Right now, you're leading a provincial party.
00:09:03.060 What's happening in Ontario right now that you're pushing for?
00:09:05.820 Yeah, well, listen, we're having some major issues in Ontario.
00:09:08.200 A lot of them actually relate to immigration and foreign students and things like this.
00:09:13.040 But there's so much.
00:09:15.240 In fact, provincial autonomy and provincial authority is such a big issue
00:09:18.760 that a lot of Canadians don't understand the control that provinces have.
00:09:22.960 Provinces and provincial leaders need to take back authority from the federal government.
00:09:27.340 They need to take back their constitutional authority,
00:09:29.280 whether it's education, immigration or health care, that's something that provinces can have a huge impact on.
00:09:35.840 And that's what we're fighting for with the Ontario Party.
00:09:38.900 My last question, I think it was in the lead up to the leadership race where you ran along with Lesley Lewis, Aaron O'Toole and Peter McKay.
00:09:45.260 Peter McKay called Andrew Scheer's social conservative views a stinking albatross.
00:09:49.800 Do you think there's growth potential or is it still a burden on a conservative leader to hold a caucus with those kinds of views?
00:10:00.400 You know what, it certainly would be challenging because you have a very elite sort of liberal media consensus that would give you a hard time.
00:10:09.000 But the fact is, is on the ground, the average, I mean, we're talking about normal views. 0.55
00:10:13.480 Things like, you know, men shouldn't be playing on women's sports teams or competing against women. 0.96
00:10:18.420 Men shouldn't be in women's bathrooms. 0.98
00:10:20.440 Children should not be told that there's 99 genders.
00:10:23.160 They should be allowed to live their lives without being medicated or operated on
00:10:28.520 to change their gender identity.
00:10:31.340 These are things that I believe are winning issues, 0.99
00:10:33.880 and we're seeing that sell to the border,
00:10:35.560 and I believe that that can also be a winning issue here in Canada.
00:10:38.800 Thank you very much.