MONTREAL—Over the near-decade that Patrick Brown, the new leader of the Ontario Progressive Conservative party, spent in Parliament we had only one conversation. We talked on the phone at his initiative about a month before the weekend’s leadership vote.

Based on his voting record in the House of Commons, I had described the Barrie MP as a social conservative in a couple of columns. The purpose of Brown’s call was to convince me to that the label did not fit.

Yes, he had voted to repeal same-sex marriage. But he said that was to honour Stephen Harper’s 2006 commitment to test whether there was enough support to revisit the issue. Brown pointed out that he had also been the first Conservative MP to attend his riding’s Pride parade.

And what about Harper’s promise to not reopen the abortion debate? Did not Brown support motions designed to do the opposite? Had that not earned him the seal of approval that the Campaign Life Coalition, a leading anti-abortion lobby, awards to exemplary social conservative politicians?

Brown replied that on those occasions he was reflecting his constituents’ views. (Presumably he was also being a good constituency MP when he objected to the 2008 awarding of the Order of Canada to abortion crusader Henry Morgentaler.)

Be that as it may, the fact is that when Brown launched his leadership campaign last fall, he stole a page from Harper’s handbook and got off the anti-abortion bandwagon. He said that, on his watch at Queen’s Park, Ontario’s abortion services would continue to be publicly funded and widely available.

In Alberta, former MP Brian Jean similarly distanced himself from his social conservative record when he became the leader of the Wildrose Party. His provincial campaign was single-mindedly focused on fiscal conservatism.

Brown and Jean would not be the first leaders to leave their views on abortion at the door of a political corner office. A devout Catholic, Lucien Bouchard held staunch anti-abortion views. Even after he left Brian Mulroney’s government in 1990, he made sure to be in the House to vote for a bill designed to recriminalize the procedure.

Yet, as federal leader and as premier, Bouchard religiously abstained from pursuing an anti-abortion agenda.

By now the issue has become a third rail in Canadian electoral politics that socially conservative politicians touch at their own peril. As for same-sex marriage, it is a done deal that there is no impetus to revisit.

But what about medically assisted suicide, the next hill that the religious right is poised to do battle on?

Since the Supreme Court unanimously struck down the prohibition on assisted suicide, the clock has been ticking on Parliament and the provincial legislatures to come up with Charter-proof legislation.

On Parliament Hill, the ruling Conservatives are about to launch public consultations that will push the issue off the federal legislative agenda until after the fall election.

But whether Parliament legislates in time for next winter’s court-imposed deadline or not, the provinces will have to adjust their end-of-life protocols to its prescriptions. With politicians with solid social conservative pedigrees leading the official opposition in two of Canada’s largest provinces, a simmering social policy debate could yet boil over.

Opponents of assisted suicide — including the religious right — fought a Quebec law to allow it to no avail. The bill — which comes into effect at the end of the year — passed with all-party support in the National Assembly. In Quebec, it is a rare moral issue that becomes a political football.

The same cannot be said of Ontario — a province where the updating of the sexual health education curriculum is raising red flags in some communities this spring — or Alberta.

Brown and Jean both voted against medically assisted suicide in Commons five years ago. But that was before the Supreme Court ruling and most other MPs including many Liberals and New Democrats also opposed the notion.

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Picking a side in the upcoming debate on the way forward from the Supreme Court’s landmark ruling on medically assisted suicide will provide a measure of how much distance there really is between the two rookie leaders and the many social conservatives that helped them up the political ladder.