Rawan Jabaji: On December 27, 2005, almost a month before the federal elections in Canada, police launched an investigation over allegations that the Liberal Finance Minister’s office had engaged in insider trading. Stephen Harper, then leader of the minority Conservative Party, saw this as an excellent opportunity to highlight the corruption in the then-ruling Liberal Party in attempts to win the upcoming election for the Conservatives and become Prime Minister. And that he did. On February 6, 2006, Harper, an evangelical Christian, was sworn in as Canada’s 22nd Prime Minister.

In The New York Times November 19 article“Gay Marriage Galvanizes Canada’s Religious Right,” Christopher Mason writes that back in 2003 when the gay marriage debate was in its nascent stages there was only one “full-time office in Ottawa to lobby politicians.” But with the passing of the 2005 legislation allowing gay marriage and the appointment of Harper as Prime Minister, Mason makes the claim that the Christian right is becoming a force to reckoned with in Canada. Mason writes:

Before now, the Christian right was not a political force in the mostly secular, liberal country. But it is coalescing with new clout and credibility, similar to the evangelical Christian movement in the United States in the 1980s, though not nearly on the same scale.

And with the United States to its south, where the Christian right-driven Bush administration has ruled with an almost iron fist for the past six years, it doesn’t seem so far-fetched that the epidemic has spread north. But if it’s “not nearly on the same scale” as the American movement, then what type of scale is it on? Should the new Canadian Christian right be well-accounted for or merely acknowledged as a demographic? Mason tries to make the case that evangelicals are quickly mobilizing with offices, rallies, and petitions, and, with the help of Harper, will “reverse the law allowing gay marriage,” and take back Canada’s faith. But according to whom? For answers Mason goes to many of the people that claim they are winning: one conservative Christian group, the Evangelical Fellowship of Canada, the president of the Canada Christian College, Charles McVety (who is also “the leader of several evangelical Christian organizations” that Mason fails to name), a political science professor from Carleton University in Ottawa, who studies the politics of evangelical Christians in Canada, and the director of the conservative Institution of Canadian Values, Joseph C. Ben-Ami.

Mason writes that “half a dozen organizations like the Evangelical Fellowship of Canada work full-time in Ottawa, four of which opened offices in the past year, all seeking to reverse the law allowing gay marriage,” but mentions only one. With this declaration Mason paints the picture of offices filled with God-fearing evangelicals popping up all over Ottawa, but never mentions the names of these half a dozen organizations or explains how much clout they really carry, perhaps overstating the case, a recurring offense in The New York Times. He even fails to provide an approximate figure for the number of evangelicals in Canada. He writes that “they represent just some of the dozens of well-organized conservative Christian groups around the country and more than a hundred grass-roots campaigns focused on the issue.” Dozens are smaller than hundreds, so why not mention one of the more than a hundred grass-root campaigns addressing the gay marriage issue? Mason’s reporting relies heavily on the testimony of the leaders, not the people, working on the grass-root level. He doesn’t color his story with images, characters and anecdotes that capture an essence for what is going on with the evangelical movement in Canada. Mason claims that these groups are working to lobby politicians to overturn the law, but never mentions the name of even one politician they are lobbying. In fact, Mason does not even quote any members of Parliament, whether from the Conservative, Liberal, Independent, or any other Canadian party, letting his five sources, four of which are obviously conservative, tell his story.

It might be true that these Christian conservatives are working earnestly to overturn the law, and await Harper to “hold a vote in Parliament on whether to revisit the gay marriage debate,” however the vote will not be whether or not to allow gay marriage, but rather will decide whether or not the issue should be reopened for debate in Parliament, something Mason only mentions 13 paragraphs into the piece. He adds that the Christian right just wants to get the issue back on the platform as a strategy to gauge where the new elected officials in Parliament stand, because “they say that the vote in Parliament will be difficult to win.” And for Harper this is just “an attempt to appease the religious social conservatives…without losing moderate voters who want to avoid the issue.” So if the Christian right knows the gay marriage issue itself will most probably not be voted on, openly claiming it to be a strategy, and Harper is weary of even pushing the issue, then really how powerful is the Christian right lobby in Canada? Even if Harper’s appointment and the gay marriage issue has galvanized some unnamed evangelical Christian groups, they must not be coalescing with enough new clout and credibility if the vote is difficult win, and their political poster-boy, Harper, is trying to play nice with moderates for the upcoming election.

Mason quotes Jonathan Malloy, a political science professor at Carleton University, who says that if the gay issue fades away just like the abortion issue has, the Christian right “won’t have a clear-cut issue they can strongly organize on. They’re developing a base here but they need something to organize and keep the funds going.” Mason follows up this expert’s opinion stating that polling figures from the last election “show an identifiable bloc of religious voters, mainly evangelicals and Catholics, supporting the Conservative Party.” Now this may be true, but again Mason does not source the poll or provide any precise numbers to back up the assertion.

Instead of constructing a narrative around the development of the Christian right in Canada by delving deep into the roots of the movement, Mason barely skims the surface. In the wake of a new evangelical leader and the passing of legislation permitting gay marriage, Mason reports an entire story on the Christian right in Canada by the Christian right in Canada. And just because the Christian evangelicals in Canada aspire to carry the clout that American evangelicals do, that doesn’t mean Mason should report it, becoming the boy who cried evangelicals in Canada.

Rawan Jabaji is a graduate student in NYU’s Department of Journalism.