Conservative Senator Nancy Ruth told aid groups to “shut the fuck up” over abortion funding and the Liberals immediately sent out a fundraising letter yesterday, urging Canadian women to speak up by donating $25or $50 to a progressive-thinking party.
Liberal Party president Alf Apps told The Globe this morning that Stephen Harper has become the “master” of winning government and raising money off the backs of the “angry minority” of Canadians. Sensing a profound anger among women over the government’s decision not to fund access to safe and legal abortions as part of its signature G8 initiative on maternal health, the Liberals tore a page from the Tory fundraising manual.
“So this is how the Conservative government treats those who work with women and children in some of the world’s poorest nations?” asks Adam Smith, director of the National Liberal Fund, in the letter he fired off to supporters yesterday.
He then notes the incident by Ms. Ruth, who yesterday told international aid workers on Parliament Hill the best strategy to deal with abortion funding in the developing world is not to push too hard – and to keep quiet about it until the G8 starts in about five weeks.
Rather than being threatening, the Senator’s comments were apparently a “suggestion of strategy” – that of self-censorship.
The Liberals weren’t buying it: “The men and women who were insulted and threatened … have every right to be deeply concerned about this government’s backwards approach to maternal health, which departs from over twenty years of established Canadian policy supporting women’s rights to access safe, legal abortion and the full range of family planning services.”
This morning, Mr. Apps said that their letter is especially focused on women. “Generally speaking we don’t want to move to this kind of [Tory-style] fundraising but … people are articulating anger about this.”
Mr. Apps says the Liberals have a “duty to keep the tone high rather than exacerbate the anger of Canadians. … But the problems is it’s very hard to ignore a situation where Canadians are getting angrier.”
And it’s hard to ignore results.
Coincidentally, this latest fundraising salvo from the Liberals came as Elections Canada released first-quarter results for political donations. They showed that Stephen Harper’s Conservatives raised more money than the three opposition parties combined – $4.02-million compared to $1.59-million for the Liberals; $900,198 for the NDP and $233,285 for the Green Party.
The Conservative campaigns mocking Mr. Ignatieff for just visiting the country or wanting power just for the sake of it seem to have proven successful. Not surprisingly yesterday, the Conservatives were quick to send out talking points noting that the “real story with these fundraising numbers is the downward trend of the Liberal Party.”
Mr. Apps said the Conservatives are correct but he is hoping that downward trend will reverse itself in the next month. Explaining the first-quarter results, the party president said the Liberals had suspended much of their fundraising as Michael Ignatieff concentrated on town halls and roundtable meetings in advance of the thinkers’ conference in Montreal. This pushed the annual leader’s fundraising dinners back to this month, with events scheduled in Montreal, Toronto and Vancouver.
Meanwhile, the Conservatives made the most of their successful first quarter: “Just a few months ago the Liberal Party was bragging about their momentum in fundraising, yet this is the third straight quarter the Liberals have seen a decline in their numbers,” the Tory talking points say.
“They are certainly right about their momentum – but it’s not going in the direction they want. When Dion was Liberal leader he never experienced three quarters of decline like this. This says a lot about Ignatieff’s leadership.”
