I have obtained an email of CPC MP's assistant in response to the issue of questionnaires. He writes:
The reality is that the Conservative Party discourages its candidates and MPs from responding to questionnaires on any issue. That is because most questionnaires received by MPs and candidates are drafted by interest groups, and are not scientifically sound. Such surveys often do not allow respondents to express their genuine views on important matters, because they provide limited response options that do not accurately reflect the full range of facts and possible opinions on complex questions. As a result, such surveys often have the effect of misinforming, rather than informing, the voting public.
I don't really buy that. This is Campaign Life Coalition's Questionnaire from the last election:
Do you believe life begins at conception (fertilization)?
If elected, will you support measures to introduce and pass a law to protect every unborn child from the time of conception (fertilization) onward?
Are there any circumstances under which you believe a woman should have access to abortion? (Note: Surgical or medical intervention, designed to prevent the death of the mother i.e. in the cases of tubal pregnancy or cervical cancer, which results in the unintended death of the preborn child is not an abortion)
If elected, will you support legislative or regulatory measures that would prohibit the dispensing of abortion-inducing pharmaceuticals?
If elected, will you support legislative or regulatory measures to prohibit experimentation upon human embryos, at every stage of development?
If elected, will you oppose any legislative or regulatory measures designed to permit the deliberate killing (euthanasia) of a human being regardless of age, state of health or "anticipated quality of life" or designed to permit "doctor-assisted suicide"?
If elected, will you support legislative or regulatory measures to explicitly exclude abortion as an insured health service under the Canada Health Act?
If elected, will you vote for measures that define marriage as the union of one man and one woman to the exclusion of all others?
If a politician has a more complex answer, there's nothing stopping him from adding qualifications to his answer. Campaign Life always publishes comments that candidates add to the questionnaire. If the candidate chooses to write a letter instead of answering a questionnaire, that is also taken into account. But I think these questions are pretty straightforward. Few questions of the average voter are "scientifically sound". This isn't a survey, it's an attempt to discover what an individual candidate has to say. You don't need a scientifically sound question to ask. What's the difference between a politician responding to these questions orally (which the Conservatives do not openly discourage) and answering them on paper?
The difference is that the Conservative Party does not want "evidence" for the mainstream media to reproduce, like that footage of Cheryl Gallant saying that abortion is no different that Daniel Stern's beheading. Of course, no one in the Conservative Party went to bat for Cheryl to prove her claim, by showing testimony of abortionists who do partial birth abortions (and who do occasionally rip off babies' heads).
It seems to me if the Conservative Party stood up to the MSM instead of kowtowing to it, it might gain more respect. But I strongly suspect there is a current of Red Tories who want to see so-cons to go down, so they don't fight for them. They don't have the guts to stand up for so-cons, because they believe the very same things that the MSM uses in an attempt to shame us, so they feel the shame. They think the rest of Canada judges them by the standards of the MSM, when in fact, the people who're most likely to care won't vote Conservative to begin with.
