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By Lloyd Mackey
 HARRY LaFORME and Ken Epp, each in his own way, is coming to represent a different facet of healing and conflict resolution.
Epp is the veteran Edmonton-area Conservative MP whose Bill C-484 recently passed second reading in the House of Commons and is about to be debated at the Commons' Justice and Human Rights Committee.
The bill, entitled the 'Unborn Victims of Crime Act,' is designed to encourage relatively stronger penalties under the law for killers whose victims are pregnant women. Epp describes the proposed legislation as being truly pro-choice, because it recognizes that a woman has a right to choose to carry her unborn child to term.
But C-484 has drawn some "radioactive" opposition, not dissimilar to that which often emerges when social conservatives propose legislation to outlaw or otherwise limit abortion.
Some of the expressed opposition to Epp's bill has come from such as the Quebec Federation of Medical Specialists, Carolyn Bennett (a Toronto-area MP, family physician and sometime abortion provider), National Abortion Federation president Vicki Saporta, and New Brunswick Status of Women Council chair Ginette Petitpas-Taylor.
Saporta suggests, in an op-ed piece appearing in the April 26 Ottawa Citizen, that "by recognizing a developing fetus as a victim of a crime separate from a woman, this legislation could erode Canadian women's right to safe and legal abortion by treading closer to the line of bestowing legal rights on a fetus."
Further, she suggests that it is impossible to separate this proposed legislation from its sponsor: Epp, a "well known opponent of legal abortion."
In the April 29 Moncton Times & Transcript, Epp responds to similar contentions by Petitpas-Taylor, that she is "parroting the alarmist claims of abortion activist groups which have been attempting to discredit C-484 by alleging that hundreds of women have been arrested/prosecuted under supposedly similar laws in the United States."
From this viewpoint, the impressive points about Epp's bill relate to its clear disclaimer that "for greater certainty, this section does not apply in respect of (a) conduct relating to the lawful termination of the pregnancy of the mother of the child to which the mother has consented . . . or (c) any act or omission by the mother of the child."
In other words, it is not about abortion, but about choice and protection of both mother and unborn child.
Epp is one of a fair number of people in the pro-life movement who have moved, in recent years, to protect the unborn without insisting on interfering with a women's right to choose. Seemingly, some in the abortion rights movement would like to build a wall against any rapprochement with people whose views are informed by pro-life concepts.
But, if there is any tiny light of hope for such rapprochement, it is contained in words buried in Saporta's op-ed piece. She notes: "The National Abortion Federation (NAF), the professional association of abortion providers in Canada and the United States, fully supports a woman's right to choose to carry a pregnancy to term."
* * *
My reference, at the beginning of this piece, to Harry LaForme, relates to his appointment, on Monday, April 28, as the chair of the Indian Residential Schools Truth and Reconciliation Commission.
As it happens, I had been waiting for news of this appointment for some weeks, since talking with Hans Kouwenberg after he and several other Canadian church leaders met with Ottawa officials with respect to the development of the commission.
"This is an important story. I hope you will keep an eye on it," he said simply.
Kouwenberg, an Abbotsford, BC pastor, is presently wrapping up a one-year term as moderator of the general assembly of the Presbyterian Church in Canada. The PCIC is one of the denominations which, in the past, operated Indian residential schools in partnership with the federal governments of the day.
Justice LaForme is the logical choice to head the commission. Both First Nations Assembly Chief Phil Fontaine and Indian Affairs Minister Chuck Strahl are agreed on that.
As part of the Ontario Court of Appeal, he is, as it happens, considered to be Canada's senior aboriginal judge. A member of the Mississaugas of New Credit First Nation near Brantford, he "was taunted as a child growing up poor on the reserve and has spoken of the anger that seethed in him for years," according to Sue Bailey, reporting on the LaForme appointment in the Halifax Chronicle-Herald.
In other words, he is informed for the task ahead of him, by his growing up aboriginal.
* * *
The commission's gatherings, and the truth and reconciliation concepts embedded within them, are patterned after what happened in South Africa, inspired by Anglican Archbishop Desmond Tutu, after the fall of apartheid.
The church and government, in their various forms, were involved in apartheid. And in Canada, the church and government, in their various forms, were involved in the residential school system.
LaForme told Bailey that he sees the purpose of the cross-Canada truth hearings "not so we can punish, but so we can walk forward into the future."
* * *
The dot-connecting, in this exercise, is to note that both Epp and LaForme are informed by their backgrounds and experiences, in addition to the particular roles they play, at present, respectively as parliamentarian and judge.
* * *
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) He can be reached at lmackey@canadianchristianity.com.
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