Federal election Christian Heritage Party (CHP) candidate Don Spratt is running a campaign to reverse what he regards as societal trends all too prevalent in the modern world.
“We started to decay many decades ago, and we have walked further and further away from the principles that made us great,” he says. “Now, we are moving into tyranny, and a lot of the tyranny is coming right out of the Supreme Court of Canada.”
That is Spratt’s way of saying court decisions surrounding euthanasia, abortion, gay rights and some multicultural principles are running contrary to the foundations on which he says Canada was built.
He sees euthanasia and abortion as contrary to the Biblical emphasis on the sanctity of life and what he describes as the “Christian moral consensus” which he believes was embedded in the legal system imported from England.
“God is the author of life, it’s His jurisdiction. He has jurisdiction over when life begins, He brought us in, He can take us out,” said Spratt. “He has jurisdiction over what is marriage, one man and one woman.”
At age 67, Spratt jokes that he is on the verge of becoming an old codger, but his philosophy is all about children, or more specifically the rights of unborn children, whose lives he says begin at conception in the womb.
In the 1990s, his anti-abortion activism saw him locked up twice in jail, once for 18 days and another time for 30 days for breaking the law enshrined in Bill-48 Access to Abortion Services Act, the “bubble zone law,” which bans protests within about half a block of abortion clinics.
“When the [provincial] NDP government came into power, they brought in the bubble zone law, the access to abortion services act, which is a unique law in all of North America... I’ve challenged that twice. The first time I went in with a cross, with a sign that says ‘you shall not murder.’”
He also wore black electrical tape covering his mouth when he entered the bubble with the nine foot cross and sign.
Spratt argued he was exercising his right to freedom of speech and expression, but the court system did not see it that way.
Raising his family in Surrey, Spratt has worked a variety of manual labour jobs, machine-oriented and also as a paramedic in the mining industry, and he is an ordained minister.
As a Christian activist, he was overseas in Russia after the breakdown of the communist empire, helping people of his faith who were being persecuted there, he says.
His views on abortion cannot be overstated, as he says it is the main plank of his political platform.
While many see planned parenthood, or the right to abortion, as one of the staples of women’s liberation and a check against population explosion, Pratt sees it as murder.
“The government is one of the biggest crooks in the country because they kill 300 children a day in this country. Over 100,000 a year. And they think it’s just fine. It’s murder.”
“That’s the first plank in the platform really,” he said. “We are calling for people to vote their conscience on a non-partisan basis only for people who represent their values.”
Normally a resident of Tumbler Ridge in the northeast, Pratt came to the northwest to run as the CHP candidate in Skeena – Bulkley Valley when party leader Rod Taylor, who lives in Telkwa, decided to run in the Ottawa area, where he hopes to raise the party’s profile.
Had he stayed in Tumbler Ridge, Spratt said he would have supported Conservative incumbent Bob Zimmer in the Prince George-Peace River riding and not run against him because of values they share. Spratt will be staying in Taylor’s home for the duration of the elections and this is the first time he has ever been in the northwest.
When it comes to the potential for liquefied natural gas development in the region, Spratt says he has seen the industry up close, with many drilling licences approved near Tumbler Ridge. Though he says production has slowed there, the supply is still there and he thinks it needs to be exported.
As for the opposition by the Wet’suwet’en Unist’ot’en to gas pipelines crossing their traditional territory near Houston, Spratt backs their right to protest, and he highlights his own experiences of being jailed for his pro-life campaigning.
“I think all Canadians have a right to protest. Of course there are certain things that you can’t protest in this country without getting locked up.”
“I think all of their concerns should be taken into consideration,” said Spratt of the Unist’ot’en.
“But I think at the end of the day it’s like a highway. They have to be able to make a decision and say it’s got to go in and this is where it’s got to go.”