Mark Carney has no moral limits in his reckless pursuit of power
If he'll accept Marilyn Gladu, he truly has no boundaries or principles.
As of yesterday, Prime Minister Mark Carney has attracted a new floor-crosser to his Liberal caucus; Marilyn Gladu, formerly the Conservative MP for Sarnia—Lambton—Bkejwanong since 2015, has now become a Liberal MP. To put things mildly, there is not a single commentator or analyst who would have expected Ms. Gladu of all MPs to become a Liberal, and these events constitute a massive shock to our political system.
Mind you, I have made my criticisms of floor-crossing clear already in previous columns; regardless of whether they benefit my personal ideology and goals, they are fundamentally corrosive to our democratic order. I need not repeat myself, and this column is not about that wider concept. Here, the concern is specifically about one individual, Ms. Gladu, and the fact that she is a morally odious person whom no party should be willing to accept.
Explaining the problem is a very simple process: we will merely examine all the morally odious things Marilyn Gladu has done and said in her political career, all the reasons Liberals have said you must vote for them against the Tories, and we will ask ourselves what differences could possibly be left between Liberals and Tories?
A professional engineer by trade, Ms. Gladu entered federal politics in 2015 as a Conservative MP, a firmly socially conservative presence. In February 2020, when indigenous protests occurred nationwide in solidarity with the Wet’suwet’en opposition to a pipeline through their traditional territories.
Ms. Gladu’s response was to demand that the Canadian military be deployed against Mohawk protestors in Ontario, a bitter echo of when the Canadian military was deployed this way during the Kanehsatà:ke Resistance in 1990, maiming indigenous children to help steal the land for a golf course.
This is who Liberals seek for their caucus? A woman who seeks to use the military for the benefit of white-owned businesses, against indigenous people who assert their basic rights? Just two months later, after disqualifying out of the Conservative leadership race due to failing to meet minimums for fundraising and signatures, she went on public radio and parroted Donald Trump’s false claims that hydroxychloroquine was “nearly 100%” effective at curing COVID-19.
Again, this is completely incorrect, and going on the radio as a figure of authority to spread misinformation during the pandemic was an extremely dangerous act. The Mayor of Sarnia, contained within her riding, would condemn these remarks and point out that medical experts did not agree. But moving further on the issue of medical malpractice, in June 2021 Ms. Gladu voted against banning queer conversion “therapy”, claiming she was doing so to protect the churches in her riding.
Ironically, those same churches instantly distanced themselves from her, insisting—to their credit— that they do support banning this form of torture against queer children. These pastors do not want to do this to queer kids, and they resent the implication by their MP that they would! Thankfully, the bill would eventually pass by December, but nonetheless Ms. Gladu believes it is legitimate for religious organizations to force queer people to stop being who they are.
And on the topic of abortion, the Campaign Life Coalition of all groups is crowing that with the acceptance of MPs like Marilyn Gladu, Liberals are now moving away from being pro-choice as party policy, and allowing forced birth extremists into their ranks. Are these the groups that Liberals now want to cater to, queerphobes and anti-choicers who want to strip away civil rights?
Finally, I would be remiss if I did not point out that during the Convoy Occupation in 2022, Marilyn Gladu met with the insurrectionist group and pressured former Prime Minister Trudeau to meet with them as well, despite their stated goal being to remove the democratically elected government from power and institute a ruling council over Canada. Do the Liberals now support the Convoy that terrorized Ottawa for weeks?
If there’s one additional irony, aside from all her morally odious stances, it is that Marilyn Gladu herself proposed this past January that any MP who crosses the floor should be subject to an automatic by-election. She tweeted to a Conservative MP that same month who rejected crossing the floor the words “thank you for being true to the voters who elected you”, and just three weeks ago, claimed that “violating our Charter Rights has become normal” for the Carney Liberals.
Nonetheless, she’s joined the Liberals now, without renouncing any of her previous stances! The Liberal Party of Canada was already indistinguishable under Carney from a Conservative government in regard to economics and foreign affairs, but on domestic social issues the last differences are dissolving away. Any moral limits which the Liberals previously claimed to follow have been abandoned in the pursuit of power.
And with all due respect to the Federal Liberals who are complaining publicly about Ms. Gladu…your words are meaningless, because ultimately you are also okay with this. Protest all you like, but if you keep volunteering for the Federal Liberals, or donating to them, or voting for them, then you are saying “this is okay with me, this is not a dealbreaker” when it very much should be your line in the sand.
The Federal Liberals have no differences from the Federal Conservatives. They will say and do anything in order to gain more power. They have no core beliefs or principles, and have made clear that civil rights can and will be sold out for their electoral expediency. And if you support them, you’re responsible for enabling what comes next.