Conservative MP Arnold Viersen listens to a speaker during a news conference in Ottawa in 2021.Adrian Wyld/The Canadian Press
Canadians who are staunchly pro-choice should listen to Conservative MP Arnold Viersen’s appearance on Uncommons, a podcast run and hosted by Liberal MP Nate Erskine-Smith. They will – or should – walk away reassured.
Hear me out. I know the instinctive response for those concerned about abortion access in Canada will be of alarm: Here’s this socially conservative MP for Alberta talking about “preborn rights” and possible changes to Canadian law, and noting that he has introduced petitions in Parliament calling for abortion restrictions 19 times. This guy is saying the quiet part out loud, or so certain Liberals who have seized upon the audio have helpfully concluded.
I will grant that Mr. Viersen is pretty much the physical manifestation of the caricature the Liberals paint of the Conservatives every election. As Mr. Erskine-Smith pointed out during their conversation, Mr. Viersen celebrated the overturning of Roe v. Wade in the United States. He is a regular fixture at anti-abortion rallies across the country. When Mr. Erskine-Smith posed a series of rapid-fire questions about whether he would support legislation to restrict or abolish certain rights or freedoms (gay marriage, legalization of marijuana, abortion), Mr. Viersen responded as any good Conservative caricature would: vote them all down, live in presumed utopia.
But here’s the thing: If you actually listen to Mr. Viersen on Uncommons, you’ll realize his performance was absolutely dreadful. Painful. Embarrassing. He was awkward, stumbling and evasive. And he couldn’t articulate a single argument or coherent thought.
As an example: Mr. Erskine-Smith asked Mr. Viersen if he wants abortion “restricted such that it’s not available.”
Mr. Viersen replied: “I don’t, I don’t, like I don’t, again like the premise is quite off,” and then proceeded to talk about the “humanity of the preborn.”
He was then asked what he means when he says he wants to “strengthen protections for the preborn in Canada.”
“Well, there would be a recognition of their humanity,” he replied, then posed a rhetorical: “Where does that flow from there?”
“Yeah,” Mr. Erskine-Smith said, “where does it flow, how does the law change?”
Mr. Viersen didn’t answer, instead stammering out something about how Canada is the only country in the world “with no preborn protection rights.” It went on like that for nearly 20 minutes.
Mr. Viersen complained to Mr. Erskine-Smith after the appearance that he felt ambushed; he says was invited on to talk about Bill C-270 (which is about online exploitation) and that the conversation they did have was “not a good-faith discussion.”
Perhaps that is so. But one would think if a parliamentarian has spent his political career advocating for abortion restrictions, he would be capable of navigating a few straightforward questions about his stance. Indeed, Mr. Viersen could have used the opportunity to talk about sex-selective abortion or late-term abortion, which are facets of the abortion debate that are, generally speaking, more palatable to a wider Canadian audience. But instead, he slowly turned into a turtle, then whined about the interview after the fact.
Worse yet for Mr. Viersen, he was frog-marched out after the podcast was published to deliver a statement clarifying that his comments didn’t “represent the positions of the Leader, nor the policies passed by Conservative Party members themselves.”
“On these issues,” he said in the statement, “the status quo will remain under a Conservative government.”
So to summarize: a Conservative MP went on a political podcast where he was asked about abortion. He bombed. And then he was forced to deliver a message distancing himself from his own party – a party whose members, according to the Toronto Star, are now furious with him.
This is the hidden Conservative agenda to abolish abortion that we’re supposed to be worried about?
Granted, some will argue that just because Mr. Viersen was inarticulate on a podcast, that doesn’t mean that the Conservatives are incapable of rolling back abortion access. But articulation is very much the point: Canadians by and large support the status quo (more than 80 per cent, according to an Ipsos poll from 2023) and they would have to be convinced otherwise for legal action on abortion access to be politically expedient for the Conservatives.
Pierre Poilievre is not stupid. He knows the game the Liberals play every election. For him to move on the “hidden agenda” that Stephen Harper never got around to in his near-decade as prime minister, he would need, for starters, better ambassadors and a plan that doesn’t include sloppy frog-marches and embarrassing climbdowns.
So for now, Canadian women should be reassured that one of the most outspoken anti-abortion MPs currently in the CPC caucus can’t spit out a cogent sentence on his stance, and hides in his shell when challenged.