Conservatives to debate policies including abortion, DEI and MAID at Calgary convention

Conservative Party members are pressing their leader to adopt a number of controversial policy positions including private health care, scrapping Diversity Equity and Inclusion (DEI) policies and abandoning the party's previous position to stay out of the abortion debate.

These are just few of the dozens of policy proposals that will be debated at the Conservative Party convention in Calgary later this month — some of which could make it through to the final plenary stage on the convention floor where delegates will decide if they become official party policy.

The proposals up for debate range widely from ending the temporary foreign worker program, to giving the ethics commissioner more powers, to banning a digital central bank currency to increasing oversight on the appointment of judges.

Policies approved in a plenary vote on the convention floor carry weight because they are a reflection of where Conservative grassroots members stand. But Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre is still not obliged to adopt them.

Among the proposals impacting the delivery of health care in Canada is the call to give provinces "private delivery options" to deliver care "within a universal, public health-care system."

Those options include offering Canadians "insurance coverage options for health-care services" in line with other countries that have two-tier systems.

Another proposal wants to curb access to medical assistance in dying (MAID).

At present doctors and nurses qualified to participate in a medically assisted death cannot be compelled to take part, but they are legally required to refer patients that ask for MAID to a health-care professional who is willing to help them.

One proposal that will be considered in breakout-room workshops at the party convention would axe that referral requirement. 

The Conservative Party's current policy book states that "a Conservative government will not support any legislation to regulate abortion." 

During the last federal election Poilievre emphasized that point, and his personal position on the issue, saying a government led by him would not introduce "laws or other restrictions" that impact "a woman's right to decide to do with her body as she wishes."

One of the policy proposals up for debate is to erase that commitment from the policy book outright.

A rationale for the proposal explains that the party currently allows MPs free votes on abortion legislation, conscience rights for doctors and opposition to sex-selective abortions — positions that the proposal says are "inconsistent" with the pledge to avoid regulating abortion. 

While all MPs in the House of Commons voted unanimously in 2021 to ban conversion therapy — a discredited and highly criticized practice meant to change an individual's sexual orientation or gender identity — one proposal is suggesting it's time to walk that back.