Politician says free speech, religion are under attack

Former MP Stephen Woodworth launches initiative to expose ‘abuses of power’ in this country

The B.C. Catholic
WEST VANCOUVER

There’s a silent war going on in Canada, and fundamental freedoms are at stake, said a former MP.

“I’m here to tell you it no longer is a free nation for everyone,” said lawyer and politician Stephen Woodworth.

“In the last five years, a new era has been entered in Canada, where public authorities deliberately choose to eradicate or suppress the freedoms that our ancestors fought, sacrificed, and died to preserve.”

Woodworth addressed 40 people June 1 in Christ the Redeemer Parish hall during a speaking tour that included stops in Langley, Prince George, Terrace, and Vancouver.

“Anyone in this room who believes in freedom of speech, who believes in freedom of religion, who believes in freedom of association, who believes that law should be based on justice and truth … you are under attack,” he said.

Woodworth suggested there’s a denial of conscience rights when it comes to assisted suicide and a denial of freedom of religion and association when it comes to accrediting Trinity Western University law graduates, for example.

“No one is safe if we let powerful people trample upon the freedoms of any individual or group.”

Woodworth, the Conservative MP for Kitchener Centre from 2008-2015, made headlines for putting forward a motion in 2012 that proposed rethinking Parliament’s 400-year-old definition of a human being.

It states: “A child becomes a human being when it has completely proceeded, in a living state, from the body of the mother.”

Woodworth calls it a “perjured” definition. “We recognize you as a child, in Canada, before we recognize you as a human being. In Canada, some children are human beings and some are not.”

His motion was rejected in 2012 for fear of reopening the abortion issue, despite the fact that even in the 1988 Morgentaler ruling Justice Bertha Wilson said that definition was incorrect.

“You should be extremely worried that in 2012, Parliament chose to deny the human dignity and equality of individuals that it knows perfectly well are human beings.”

Last year Woodworth lost his riding to Liberal MP Raj Saini and took up another cause, the Democracy Defence Initiative.

He believes a war on democracy, justice, and freedom is being waged in his country, and not only because Motion 312 was shot down.

“Today in Canada, tyranny has yet another face,” he said, turning to assisted suicide.

“Civil authorities will now order and punish doctors who refuse their orders to cooperate in what the doctors believe to be unconscionable conduct, crimes against humanity.”

Woodworth said the recommendations of the special parliamentary committee and the Ontario College of Physicians and Surgeons to deny conscience rights to medical professionals amounts to tyranny.

In the Nuremburg trials after World War II, it was decided “it would no longer be an acceptable, legal excuse for committing an unconscionable act, a crime against humanity, to say you were ‘just following orders,'” he said.

That worthy principle has a flip side many forget. “If ‘just following orders’ is no longer an excuse for doing something that you know to be against your conscience, it means no civil authority can legitimately order you to violate your conscience.”

Woodworth also worried about slights against freedom of speech, including the muzzling of pro-life groups on post-secondary campuses.

“Today in Canada, state-funded university administrators deny or penalize free speech that they don’t like.”

In recent years, pro-life students have faced theft, vandalism, fines, handcuffs, trespassing charges, and legal battles for questioning abortion.

“I grew up in the shadow of the totalitarian Soviet Union…. Free religion was outlawed. Free speech was banned and supressed. What a cold shadow, such tyranny, cast over the whole world, and what jubilation greeted its demise! Have we forgotten that history so thoroughly that we are willing to let that tyranny creep into Canada?”

He called those present to join his Democracy Defence Initiative.

“I am here to call you to action, to enlist you in a great and noble and essential battle for freedom and democracy,” he said.

“We need a non-partisan, political action movement. I have a vision of an association of like-minded freedom defenders, of all partisan stripes or no partisan stripe, of all religious persuasion or no religious persuasion, of all occupations and all ages, to come together to visibly, vocally, and repeatedly stand up for freedom and democracy.”

His group has already held at least one demonstration; it was at of the Law Courts in Vancouver in defence of Trinity Western University. He also plans to write letters and hold rallies wherever needed to decry “the increasing abuse of power in Canada.”

Participant Dennis Forester appreciated Woodworth’s approach to the issues.

“I like the way he put it. I think the way he’s handling it, he can appeal to people outside religious groups. He will appeal to secularists,” because many are concerned about democracy and freedom.

Young lawyer Shashika Stanislaus agreed.

“I really do believe that freedom of conscience is the next battleground when it comes to civil rights in Canada.”