LILLEY: Singh launches hollow abortion attack on Poilievre's Conservatives

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Jagmeet Singh and the NDP have decided that they no longer need to focus on Justin Trudeau and the Liberals, they need to focus on Pierre Poilievre and the Conservatives. They’ve also determined that taking a radical and extreme position on abortion is the path to electoral success.

At a news conference in Toronto on Monday, Singh said that when his party gets its next opposition day motion, it will stand up against the Conservatives on abortion. It’s nothing but pure political grandstanding, but that’s all Singh really has these days.

First off, the Conservatives are not the party in power and won’t be for some time because Singh and the NDP have been propping up the Trudeau Liberals. Secondly, there is no opposition day scheduled for the NDP to debate their motion because the House of Commons is effectively shut down while probing alleged corruption with the Liberal government’s now-abolished “green slush fund.”

Still, Singh has his sights set on Poilievre and the Conservatives, which perhaps tells you that he also thinks Trudeau is done.

“We know with the growing worries about what’s going on in the states, attacks on the right to choose are becoming more and more prevalent,” Singh said at his news conference.

Ah, importing U.S. politics into Canada. If you thought that was just a Trudeau move, then think again.

Poilievre has been clear; he has no plans to introduce abortion legislation if elected.

That doesn’t matter to Singh, who said that a Conservative MP had spoken at a Florida church that is anti-choice and that it was worrisome. I’m not sure if Singh noticed the bald guy standing to his left and clapping during the news conference, but that man was Norm Di Pasquale, serial candidate for office and serial loser, except when he was elected as a Catholic school board trustee.

In case Singh doesn’t realize it, the Catholic Church is quite opposed to abortion and I’m willing to bet that in addition to being a Catholic school trustee, Di Pasquale has been to mass more than once. Of course, Singh’s own Sikh religion isn’t exactly pro-abortion either, but that doesn’t appear to bother him.

While attacking the Conservatives, who aren’t in power, on the issue of abortion, Singh showed another level of hypocrisy. He lamented the closing of an abortion clinic in New Brunswick due to a lack of provincial funding and promised to use the Canada Health Act to make sure that doesn’t happen again.

Of course, the clinic that closed was a private abortion clinic, which apparently is the only kind of private health care the NDP supports. If there is a private clinic giving you access to cataract surgery or a hip replacement, the NDP will be opposed. But they fully support private abortion clinics, including the one steps from Parliament Hill in Ottawa.

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The NDP pointed to several bills and motions that they say show Poilievre doesn’t support the “right to choose.” The problem with that phrase is that no court in Canada has ruled there is a “right to choose,” that’s an American expression.

Secondly, Poilievre voted in favour of two bills that would have made assaulting a woman while she was pregnant an aggravating factor at sentencing. He also voted for a bill that would make coercing a woman into getting an abortion a crime. It came about after a Winnipeg woman was killed by her partner for refusing to get an abortion.

Supporting a bill like that seems to be a step too far for the radical NDP.

Singh and the NDP spent more than two years propping up the Liberal government. Over that time, the Liberals fell in the polls to the point that the NDP is ahead of the Liberals outside of Quebec.

That didn’t happen because the NDP gained more voter support, it happened because the Liberals fell and voters flocked to the Conservatives. So now Singh is looking to attack Poilievre on any issue he can, even one that shows his own hypocrisy.