By Lloyd Mackey

IT WAS good to sit down with Senator David Smith last Tuesday, if only for old times' sake.

The reason for our chat was a recent research paper from the Evangelical Fellowship of Canada, analyzing evangelical Christian voting trends over the past 14 years. I have quoted Smith, and Bill Blaikie of the NDP as well, in this week's lead story at CC.com.

And lest that revelation leave my unabashedly unapologetic right-wing conservative friends (they know who they are) with the impression that I have turned from a muddling-in-the-middle, tilting slightly right type into a militant Marxist of some kind, please permit me to mildly deny all charges.

Smith was not always a senator, of course. In the Trudeau years, he was in the Liberal cabinet. After that, holding a senior partnership position in a formidable national law firm, he chaired and co-chaired successful Liberal campaigns, mostly for Jean Chretien.

One of his understandably successful areas of influence was in helping connect evangelical Christians with the Liberal political perspective. He came by this quite naturally. And that is where sitting down and talking about old times comes into play. Parts of this story I have told before, and for that I beg some readers' indulgence.

At the time I was a high school senior in Victoria, he was just getting out of junior high. He went to Vic High and I was at Oak Bay. I went to church at the old Oaklands Gospel Hall -- later Oaklands Chapel. He worshipped at Glad Tidings Tabernacle -- later GT Church, where his father, C. B. Smith, was the very much beloved pastor.

Two of Smith's brothers, Robert and George, followed their father into the Pentecostal ministry. David, rather, chose law and politics. He did keep to the faith, in a manner of speaking. He became a Baptist and his pastor, these days, is Peter Holmes, the son of another former long time Victorian, Robert Holmes, who did a couple of stints as minister at Central Baptist, just a couple of blocks over from Glad Tidings.

All of this background is my defence for knowing that it would be a good idea to ask Smith about evangelical voting trends and the Liberal party.

But, as he is wont to do, the senator had some fresh story-telling to do, when I sat down with him.

He had just returned from Washington, DC, where, as it happened, he was caught up in the big anti-healthcare-reform rally on Capitol Hill. That was the event that, some will recall, drew anywhere from 65,000 to 1.5 million people, depending on who was doing the counting.

I asked Smith what his estimate was. "'Evangelastically' speaking?" he winked knowingly. Being a preacher's kid, he knew that evangelists, in their enthusiasm, sometimes stretch their crowd counts elastically.

No, I suggested. You are a lawyer. You would never exaggerate.

"Well, it was huge. Maybe 300,000, maybe more -- 500,000 or so."

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But the thing that blew Smith away -- for all his appreciation of Pentecostal and Baptist preaching, Canadian style -- was what he described as the "redneck" elements in the rally crowd.

He handed me a brochure that illustrated his point. Entitled The USA in Bible Prophecy, it suggested that the strongest religio-political power in the world today is the papacy. Its 12th of 17 points was that "it is clear that the influence and power of both the United States and the papacy are escalating with rapidity."

The brochure was produced by Amazing Facts of Roseville, California. AF has a television ministry that I remember watching a few years ago.

What struck Smith was the great number of people, including evangelical Christians, who were taking part in an anti-healthcare-reform rally. And, when he identified himself as a Canadian, some of his fellow attenders would say something like "You kill people, up there." They were picking up on the 'death panel' theme that circulated in the US for several days.

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We will wrap up this story pretty quickly with a quote from President Obama and Prime Minister Harper. The first, as we know, is described by some Americans as the first Muslim-Marxist president. The second is known by some Canadians as that hard-right ideologue running Canada with an iron fist.

In his address to the US Congress in defence of his health care agenda, Obama noted:

There are those on the left who believe that the only way to fix the system is through a single-payer system like Canada's, where we would severely restrict the private insurance market and have the government provide coverage for everyone. On the right, there are those who argue that we should end the employer-based system and leave individuals to buy health insurance on their own.

Today, I will say some things some of you in the Fraser Institute may not want to hear . . .

The Conservative Party of Canada fully supports the evolution of the Canadian health care system within the framework of the Canada Health Act . . .

Let me speak personally here. I will never compromise public health insurance in this country because it is the only system that most Canadian families, including my own, have ever used.

In the light of the extraordinary attacks on our health care system by the people who apparently have given the prime minister such spiritual inspiration over the years, I would ask the prime minister if he is proud of our health care system?

Yes, Mr. Speaker. It is the only system my family has ever used and we are depending on it in the future.

The Canadian health care system will not only survive the attacks by right-wing commentators in the United States, but has even survived one by left-wing incompetents in Ontario.

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The House of Commons zingers notwithstanding, my discussion with Senator Smith about his encounter with Washington health-care critics served, once more, to demonstrate that the faith-political interface comes at us from all directions. And evangelicals, in some respects, are just a diverse as other North Americans, on the ins and outs of the political process.

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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.

September 17/2009