News & Analysis

On June 12th Ontario voters will elect their local riding representative to Queen’s Park. The party with the greatest number of seats will normally become the government, and its leader, the Premier of Ontario.

CLC’s philosophy has always been that you should vote for the candidate, not the party.  Whether the person is PC, Liberal, NDP or from another political party does not matter. If they are solidly pro-life and willing to stand on that principle even if it conflicts with the party line, they deserve your vote.

CLC has worked hard to interview candidates so they can be rated on life and family issues. To determine whether candidates in your riding have been rated, click here and choose ONTARIO from the drop-down menu. At this point in time however, we have only identified 20 ridings out of 107 where there are candidates who are “Pro-life” or “Educable”.  With your assistance, we hope to identify more⁽¹⁾, but this does mean that many ridings will be left with no pro-life candidate.

Many voters who feel “stranded” in these ridings are calling CLC to ask, “What are my voting options?”.  We recommend 2 main options:

Option 1: Decline your ballot

The provincial Elections Act grants Ontario voters the legal right to decline their ballot and have it recorded by the elections officer. This right is enumerated under section 53 of the Act. The total number of declined ballots is supposed to be recorded. However, Elections Ontario will not publish the reasons why ballots are declined.

This is one way to conduct a protest vote if there is no pro-life candidate in your riding. If you are considering this option, we advise you to try maximizing the impact of your protest by adding any of the following actions:

• Write “No pro-life candidate” on the front of the ballot before handing it to the returning officer.  All candidates have the right to have scrutineers present at the counting of the votes. Not all candidates have enough volunteers to have someone present at all stations, but they will have some in some locations. So, if there is a close election decided by just a few votes, imagine if on election night,  a volunteer was present who witnessed, let’s say, 200 spoiled ballots with the words "no pro-life candidate" written on them. Those volunteers would report it to the candidate, who would then know that in a close race, the declined ballots would have made the difference between winning and losing.  We suggest writing your note in blue ballpoint pen so that it stands out.
• Make an announcement before handing the ballot. We know of one pro-life activist who announced out loud, so that everyone in the room would hear it, that she was declining her ballot “because there is no pro-life candidate”. Not everyone would be comfortable drawing attention to themselves, but for those who are willing, it’s certainly a stronger way to share the pro-life message than just handing over a ballot.

Option 2:  Defeat the pro-abortion incumbent

In this election, many people are faced with the choice of a PC candidate who refuses to state their position on abortion, versus Liberal, NDP and Green candidates who all proudly advocate for abortion.  In other cases, the voter may face a situation where the PC, Liberal, NDP and Green candidates all refuse to state their position on abortion. There are only six Family Coalition Party candidates throughout the province.

Many individuals are asking CLC whether it would be advisable to hold one’s nose in these situations and cast their ballot for a less-than-perfect PC candidate, solely to ensure that Kathleen Wynne does not become Premier.

They recognize that Premier Kathleen Wynne, together with Dalton McGuinty, have ushered in moral decay like few other politicians in Ontario’s history.  This has been accomplished largely by assaulting Judaeo-Christian values and religious freedom through the public educations system.  Many pro-lifers want to deprive Wynne of yet another term in which to continue this program of moral corruption.

To read a more fulsome explanation of the harm already wrought by Kathleen Wynne and the McGuinty government in which she was Cabinet Minister, click here.  Given the circumstances, CLC cannot blame pro-life voters for exercising option 2.  Indeed, it seems a perfectly reasonable course of action.

Note:

(1) If you live in a riding where candidates have refused to state their position on abortion, please visit or phone their campaign office and try to obtain a clear answer. Then report back to CLC. We caution you to be wary of candidates who refer to their religion without directly telling you where they stand on life/family issues. There are many less than honest politicians who identify as “Catholic” or “Christian”, but support the status quo on killing children by abortion