Wildrose Leader Danielle Smith (Photo by Dave Cournoyer, used with permission)

Where does Danielle Smith stand on “conscience rights”?

With Smith’s Wildrose Party quite possibly in a position to win a majority government on April 23, Albertans deserve an unequivocal answer to this question.

Right now, they’re not getting it. Instead, Smith is playing cute, bobbing and weaving around the question or, when confronted directly as she finally was by the media yesterday, refusing to answer clearly.

If you believe in any woman’s right to reproductive choice, or in any person’s right to marry a person of the same gender, Ms. Smith’s refusal to be pinned down on this question should worry you a great deal.

That is because the phrase “conscience rights” is social conservative code for such things as allowing marriage commissioners to refuse to perform marriages for same-sex couples, for heath professionals to refuse to perform abortions, and for doctors and pharmacists to refuse to prescribe or supply birth-control pills.

In some circles in North America, and that includes some corners of Alberta, it is also be code for allowing home schoolers and others to teach and preach racist beliefs clothed in religious belief.

When you use the concept of “conscience rights” to allow people to refuse to offer basic public health care services or basic human rights, or to practice hate speech in the guise of religion, you are really encouraging them.

“Conscience rights” have figured large in the Wildrose Party’s positions over the past couple of years. As was clearly reported by the most of the media last night — and here’s to them for asking the question — the policy handbook written by the Wildrose Party in 2010 states that a Wildrose government “will implement legislation protecting the conscience rights of health care professionals.”

Here are Postmedia’s, the CBC’s and CTV’s versions of the story. There appears to have been no mention of the story, however, on any of the Alberta newspapers operated by Sun Media, where Smith’s husband is employed as a senior executive.

The party has also talked a lot about closing down the Alberta Human Rights Commission and replacing it with “a new human rights division of the provincial court of Alberta.” Wildrose supporters have frequently dismissed the Human Rights Commission as a “kangaroo court” — we’ve all heard this sort of thing from them.

Never said in any of the reporting on this topic though, as far as I’ve noticed, is how much harder and more expensive having to go through the courts would make even complaining about discrimination and hate, let alone getting them investigated or putting a stop to them. Getting rid of the Alberta Human Rights Commission would be an open invitation to racism, homophobia and religious intolerance, and it’s hard to believe the Wildrose Party and its supporters don’t understand this.

Despite their very vocal past support for this idea, as it began to appear that the far-right party has a real chance at political power in Alberta, Wildrose supporters grew very, very quiet about “conscience rights” and where they stand on them.

Asked directly yesterday by reporters if support for “conscience rights” is still the party’s policy — which it would be prudent to assume it is — Smith weaseled: “I am fundamentally a populist,” she was quoted saying in several stories.

“I fundamentally believe Albertans should decide the direction of the province, and what Albertans are telling me is that they want to see a venue where they can have a balance of rights, where everyone’s rights are respected. Those are my marching orders, that’s what I am hearing from Albertans and that’s what I believe we need to do.”

“I support the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, and when you look at it there is freedom of conscience, freedom of religion, freedom of assembly, freedom of association — all of these freedoms under our Charter need to be balanced in society against competing rights and freedoms.”

So what is this supposed to mean? Well, it’s designed not to mean much. But what it really means, I think, is that Smith supports enshrining “conscience rights” as a sop to her hard-core social conservative supporters, and if that means restricting the right of women to have an abortion or access to birth-control, or of same-sex couples to a legal marriage, well, tough luck.

Or maybe she even goes farther in her personal beliefs. Who knows? Albertans don’t, because Smith won’t tell us. And because of that, we don’t know what she will do if she becomes premier.

At the very least, if that isn’t what Danielle Smith means, then she should say so. Smith told the media yesterday she has no hidden agenda. OK, fair enough. So let’s hear what her unhidden agenda is on this topic.

This issue is too important, and too divisive, for Smith and the Wildrose Party not to come clean and tell Albertans exactly where they stand.

This post also appears on David Climenhaga’s blog, Alberta Diary.

David J. Climenhaga

David J. Climenhaga

David Climenhaga is a journalist and trade union communicator who has worked in senior writing and editing positions with the Globe and Mail and the Calgary Herald. He left journalism after the strike...