My opinion is that it's not my right to tell women what they can or can't do with their body. It's my opinion that a fetus does not have rights and consciousness does not begin until at least several months after birth. I have no problem with abortion, I do have a problem with people saying they need to defend the fetus' rights.

You don't have to make your own party btw, political parties have split in the past. You can also try that route if it's that much of a conflicting issue. I don't know how difficult it is to start a political party in Canada. I've only lived here for 10 years, immigrated from The Netherlands. There I would say it is a bit too easy lol. Pim Fortuyn and Geert Wilders come to mind, lovely characters, not.

When you join a political party you agree to have constraints placed on your ability to voice personal opinions on matters that are at odds with party policy. Especially when you have access to the public by virtue of the fact you are a representative of the party. If you don't want to accept those contstraints you don't join. Once you join you don't complain about the thing that you agreed to at the time of joining. You can try to change the rules, but you can't cry about being told to play by the rules when you knew the rules before you started to play the game.

Hundred times this. Politics is about defining a social contract in which people of different beliefs can live together. Compromise is the most important if not the only tool you have to achieve this. If you're not willing to compromise, then find a closed community that you agree with.

Anyway the issue is should a political party be able to force its members to vote a certain way. On one side yes. Otherwise what's the point of promoting the values of said political party. It would be fraud if a party promotes itself as pro-choice, then half its members vote anti abortion after the election. On the flipside, if a party's members can't agree on a subject, then it should not be a defining value of that party.

A democratic party should still be democratic itself, kinda weird when a democratic party is led by a dictator... Yet also confusing when you're trying to find out what a party stands for and all it can say is, well most of our members are pro-choice. It would be most honest.

Democracy is fucked anyway, 1 choice every 4 years on hundreds of issues. Yet voting on separate issues doesn't work either. Maybe in the future we can have a MMO called Sim Canada, and everyone can participate trying to balance the budget. Would be an interesting social experiment.

Yes but in my perfect little world I believe the politicians should be able to at least voice their own concerns; especially over something so recent and controversial, and no matter if the issue is of religious importance to an individual or not. Each MP represents the party leader in power above them but also the populace in the riding the govern. This is something I could see a Liberal party standing upon, but it is not the voice of the Liberal party, it is the voice of Trudeau. They are representing Trudeau's belief; not necessarily the Party's. I know, I know, he is the one they voted into power, but at the same time......

If this was about something else, perhaps not so much based in social-ethical matters and more in environmental - say building a pipeline through a National Park to save money (a hypothetical example but relevant under current government) I would hold the same stance. Perhaps it is because of how i view Harper that I hold this stance - for he is a man who thinks only of himself when he makes a decision, and I view him as separate to the Conservative party sometimes because of how he makes his decisions. He does not represent the Conservative party as much as he represents himself, and I view this Trudeau decision in a similar way. Throwing religion out the window I still don't think all Liberal people would be pro choice.

Wait... Canada's real?!

Much as I dislike Justin Trudeau, I do agree that an idea from a book written 2000 years ago mixed with opinion of random pretenders should not be the center of policy creation. They don't even have enough space for concrete, proven data which is constantly ignored. Why should religion get a free pass?

The answer to that is don't have political parties, and don't vote for people based on policy. The people you want running a country are people who have certain attributes (honesty, trustworthiness, a well trained mind, loyalty (to the country), recognised ability, experience, an open mind, and the less self-serving ego the better), problem is democracy as it is currently constructed almost encourages the exact opposite of all these attributes. Probably the worst possible attribute is being deeply committed to a specific ideology or set of policies, and again the current framing of democracy pretty much encourages these things. Given laws are always established through a process of negotiation, people with entrenched views are the worst possible people to participate in a system of negotiated decision-making. 

So, I say the whole system needs to be fundamentally transformed if people actually want politics and government to improve. The whole "definition of insanity" thing applies here. people want politics and government to change, but they think they can change it by doing exactly the same thing.

Democracy by election is about as effective as running a marathon for cancer. It mostly raises awareness. We have no better way atm. With current technology we can poll everyone about every issue, yet that only makes it easier to down vote things and cornering politicians with no options to make compromises or raise funds. Petitions are a great tool, yet if you ask what should we do instead or how should that be funded, you usually get a 'not my problem' as answer.

But it's really not that bad, we're doing pretty well over all.

Why bother having any actual officials, just replacement them with voting robots with their party logo on it.

I am a Canadian Catholic and I definitely believe that life starts at conception.

Trudeau's actions are disappointing but are in no way surprising. The left likes to rail against the "oppressive" views of social conservatives, but they themselves are becoming more and more the tyrants and oppressors of freedom.