We’ve done our share of criticizing the federal Liberal government for its miscues, pratfalls and headscratchers over the years. Fairness, decency and Catholic charity demand giving credit where it’s due.

As you’ll read in this issue, sharper critics than even the Register are giving thanks that Ottawa was not led into temptation by accepting House of Commons committee recommendations to abolish charitable status for churches and pro-life groups.

In fact, Campaign Life Coalition President Jeff Gunnarson was so delighted by the Carney government’s refusal to include the provisions in its Nov. 4 budget that he saw the hand of the Almighty and the mighty power of Canadian democracy working to effect the blessed absence.

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“Thanks be to God,” Gunnarson told The Catholic Register in the aftermath of the budget. “The Liberal government was right to listen to ordinary citizens and faith leaders to ultimately reject these outrageous recommendations.”

However, he and other pro-life leaders also offered prudential wisdom for those in that movement, and church leaders as well: It is ill-advised to let down their guards just because the threat has been removed this time. It is, after all, a time-honoured tradition in Ottawa that something deemed so obnoxious as to be automatically rejected can, pseudo-miraculously, return as vital policy that has been acceptable all along.

We live in a country with a political ethos, never forget, where euthanasia and assisted suicide were transformed in a mere 18 years from being criminal violations of the sanctity of life to the cutesy acronym MAiD that is about to be made available to mature minor children.

The slipperiness of our national slope is a prime reason for Gunnarson and company to be genuinely concerned that the recent budget victory may yet turn into a political rout when attention is directed elsewhere. 

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Without taking away the credit where the credit is due to the Carney government, then, it’s worth fraternally pressing the question of why the government failed to nix the toxic anti-church/anti-life recommendations months ago.

Put another way, while it is joyful relief that democracy carried the day this time, why was it necessary for all those “ordinary citizens and faith leaders” to spend time and resources fighting for something that should have been done before the ink dried on the Commons finance committee’s pre-budget consultation report last December.

Granted, the Liberals had a leadership contest and then a federal election to pre-occupy and distract them between the tabling of the finance committee report and the forming of the Carney government. But isn’t that all the more reason, all the more opportunity, for every one of the party’s leadership candidates, and the Prime Minister himself, to simply say: “No worries, faith leaders and pro-life advocates, stripping you of historic charitable status will never happen on my watch?”

Why did it take until last month –i.e. nine months – for someone of authority such as the chair of the Standing Committee on Finance, Kristina Gould, to say almost exactly that?

“Religious charities play a vital role in Canadian social support systems (and will) continue to enjoy charitable status under the same rules that apply to all charities in Canada,” said a statement from Gould’s office.

Translated: We all know the good that faith groups do, and it would be a political no-brainer to mess with that simply to placate a tiny minority of anti-faith nasties. So, if that is true and recognized, and if the “no mess just to make a bigger mess” approach applied to “all charities in Canada” (“all” self-evidently including pro-life groups that now have charitable status), why not say so in June? Or, hey, go crazy, April?

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A primary answer is that for federal Liberals in particular, and for the general political class as well, faith groups come in two varieties: those that are openly disdained and those that can be patronized when they aren’t being safely ignored. As for pro-life people, they are not to be mentioned in polite company.

One battle has been won. Guard up, there is still a steeper hill to climb.