(LifeSiteNews) — As you may recall, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau promised in his 2021 campaign platform to specifically target crisis pregnancy centres that serve women in need for the crime of being pro-life. The version of this promise that made it onto the Liberal Party’s website states that the government will “no longer provide charity status to anti-abortion organizations (for example, Crisis Pregnancy Centres) that provide dishonest counseling to women about their rights and about the options available to them at all stages of the pregnancy.”
In other words, despite the services provided to at-risk or impoverished women, failing to be as enthusiastic about abortion as Trudeau and his government automatically renders these charitable organizations ineligible for charitable status. Interestingly, the Trudeau government has thus far failed to deliver on this promise, despite vocal and insistent calls from abortion activist groups in the press to do so (including, of course, Joyce Arthur of the Abortion Rights Coalition of Canada). Perhaps Trudeau has other priorities, or perhaps the government doesn’t want to deal with the potential fallout from such a move. Thus far, they have declined to answer questions from the press about it.
It is an interesting question — abortion extremism has been a key characteristic of the Trudeau government. So why hold back now? One compelling answer has been uncovered by Canada’s intrepid pro-life blogger, Pat Maloney. She blogs at Run With Life, and I’ve covered her discoveries many times in this space. Her latest journalistic coup was published February 12. Maloney notes that she filed an Access to Information and Privacy request (ATIP) to the Privy Council Office, asking for the following:
Regarding this letter from the PMO to the Finance Department which says: ‘Introduce amendments to the Income Tax Act to make anti-abortion organizations that provide dishonest counselling to pregnant women about their rights and options ineligible for charitable status…’ I am requesting all the supporting documentation to and from the The Privy Council Office and to and from any other government department including the PMO, that supports this need to make anti-abortion charities lose their charitable status. This would also include all documented materials from external persons or organizations and government departments that provided evidence of this “dishonest counselling” to the PCO. I would also like to see the criteria that will be used to dis-qualify the affected organizations for losing their charitable status. In other words, how will Revenue Canada decide that these organizations are engaging in “dishonest counselling”?” My request would be from Jan 1, 2020 to the present day.
Eight months later, Maloney writes, she received a “miniscule 10 pages,” which contained… basically nothing. “From what little I did receive, and based on how long it took to receive it, I must conclude that they looked really hard to find something, anything at all, that would support their persecution of pro-life organizations. But they couldn’t find a thing.” Thus, the documents Maloney was provided included “no supporting documentation that supports the ‘need’ to make charities lose their charitable status,” no evidence of the “dishonest counseling” the government referenced, and no criteria “that would be used to disqualify these organizations from losing their charitable status.”
Ironically, Maloney did receive a formal admission of something pro-life groups often state: that there is no legal right to abortion in Canada. “Although abortion was decriminalized as a result of R v. Morgentaler, there is not a legal right to abortion in Canada.” This fact is considered “dangerous” by Canada’s abortion activists, who decried a campaign by one pro-life group featuring billboards that read simply, “Canada has no abortion laws.” They demanded that the billboards be taken down — not because they weren’t true but because they didn’t want Canadians to be aware of this fact.
So perhaps Canadian crisis pregnancy centres will be safe, after all. If Trudeau’s ministers are declining to answer questions about it, it’s a sure bet that they don’t want to discuss it — which means that, as Maloney’s journalism indicates, they haven’t found a way to do it that will pass public scrutiny or legal muster.
