More Dog Whistles From Harper's Back Benches

I said it when Harper was first elected, and I continue to stand by the claim that he is letting his back bench run amok with bills and other activities designed to play to the social conservative base deliberately.

He doesn't expect to have many of those bills get very far, and if he has to, he'll kill them off if he thinks that there will be a political cost to it (e.g. Bill 484 - for example) But ... because he can 'let his caucus vote "freely"' on these matters, Harper allows his caucus to keep their "social/religious conservative credentials" by voting for these bills.

The latest entry in Harper's efforts to keep his base happy emerges in the form of MP Brad Trost's petition to defund Planned Parenthood.

A petition calling for a stop to federal funding of the International Planned Parenthood Federation (IPPF) has been launched by Saskatoon-Humboldt MP Brad Trost.

Trost presented the petition to the House of Commons Monday. IPPF is funded through the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA) and, according to Trost's petition, "promotes the establishment of abortion as an international human right and lobbies aggressively to impose permissive abortion laws on developing nations."

Most people won't pay attention to this little turd of a petition - they rationally understand that IPPF does some real good in the world. The so-called "pro-life" crowd on the other hand thinks that anything to do with contraception and birth control is pure evil. It's not as if Trost hasn't opened his yap before - inevitably to groups like Lifesite, and conveniently closed-mouth towards mainstream media.

There's nothing hidden about Harper's agenda - you just have to know what to look for.