By Lloyd Mackey

THIS past week, two faith-related stories dogged the political scene, one rooted mostly in eastern Canada and the other, further west.

They were irreverently known, respectively, as "wafergate" and the "Trost-Ablonczy-Pride affair."

The moral of both the tales, from this particular perch, was that they demonstrated, more than ever, that seemingly divisive faith-political issues are more like a continuum than a deep canyon. In this context, many people who are similar in their thinking may be scattered across a continuum, from the "conciliatory" end to a more "combative" stance. The "canyon" model suggests that between the conciliatory and combative types, there is a deep canyon, and those on either side are bound never to meet.

"Wafergate" is the subject of another story posted at CC.com this week.

The trend line on the Trost-Ablonczy-Pride story goes something like this: Two weeks ago, Charles McVety, president of both Canada Christian College and Canada Family Action Coalition, circulated some complaints about a $400,000 grant made to the big gay pride festival. The July event is reputed to draw a million people each year to a parade and other celebrations in downtown Toronto.

The grant was made under the federal Marquee Tourism program administered, at the time, by Diane Ablonczy, minister of state for tourism and small business and MP for Calgary-Nose Hill. Ablonczy appeared in a photo presenting the cheque to Pride organizers. And it was that photo, published in some Toronto newspapers, that caught the eye of McVety.

Nothing more was heard for a few days. Then, Brad Trost, Conservative MP for Saskatoon-Humbolt, was quoted on LifeSite News (LSN) -- a pro-life, pro-family, conservative Catholic-leaning news service -- as suggesting that Ablonczy had made the grant over the objections of several socially-conservative members of parliament.

Along with his comments was the implication that Ablonczy was being "punished" for approving the grant by having responsibility for the Marquee program yanked from her by Industry Minister Tony Clement, the senior minister to whom she reports, as minister of state.

Some journalists in what we faith-based reporters affectionately refer to as the Mainstream Media (MSM) began to cite the dustup as a sort of "canyon" between the social conservatives -- allegedly controlled by McVety -- and people like Ablonczy. The latter, the socon critics suggest, cater too much to prurient big city social interests.

As it happened, once the "scandal" broke, other voices weighed in, coming to the defence of Ablonczy.

The first was Monte Solberg, former Ablonczy cabinet colleague who was known for his strong and competent handling of the social development portfolio. Next came Dona Cadman, the Surrey North MP who -- like her late husband, Chuck, who held the same riding -- has been championing a range of social and youth justice issues.

Then came Trost, himself, who told a Saskatoon reporter that Ablonczy was doing a good job in cabinet and he had not meant to imply that she was being "punished" for approving the Pride grant. He handled, fairly deftly, I think, the balancing act between what he had said to LSN and what he was now attempting to communicate to a broader audience, through MSM.

Let me say, at this juncture, that Trost, Ablonczy and Solberg are all evangelical Christians who are strongly respectful of pro-life and pro-traditional-family views. And Cadman, while not self-identifying as an evangelical, pays close attention to, among others, the substantial evangelical community in her riding.

But it needs to be noted that not all evangelical, pro-life and pro-traditional-family social conservatives communicate their values in the same way.

People like McVety express their opposition to gay values very strongly. And McVety, himself, has been on record as being willing to support social conservatives willing to be combative, against more gay-friendly evangelical politicians. In past, that combativeness has been expressed against such as Heritage Minister James Moore, whose stance would be Cadman-like, and Environment Minister Jim Prentice, who would be more like Solberg or Ablonczy. (An interesting aside: Moore's and Cadman's ridings are close to each other in Vancouver suburban town centres. And Prentice and Ablonczy serve Calgary city ridings, also not great distances from each other. And Trost, for his part, has a riding whose population splits between more conservative rural and less-so city roots.)

* * *

All this is to suggest that understanding the relationship between social conservatism and the larger political landscape in the present Canadian context is helped by the "continuum" model. The "canyon" model is fine for MSM journalists who want to enhance battle lines, but it is not necessarily accurate.

* * *

Lloyd Mackey is a member of the Canadian Parliamentary Press Gallery in Ottawa and author of Stephen Harper: The Case for Collaborative Governance (ECW Press, 2006), More Faithful Than We Think: Stories and Insights on Canadian Leaders Doing Politics Christianly (BayRidge Books, 2005) and Like Father, Like Son: Ernest Manning and Preston Manning (ECW Press, 1997). Lloyd can be reached at lmackey@canadianchristianity.com.

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