News
Featured Image
Conservative House leader Candice Bergen

OTTAWA, December 20, 2017 (LifeSiteNews) — Opposition House Leader Candice Bergen has joined growing chorus of outrage at the Liberals banning employers from receiving student summer job grants if they don’t sign an “attestation” that they agree with abortion and transgender “rights.”

The Justin Trudeau government justifies the ban because “sexual and reproductive rights — and the right to access safe and legal abortions” are at “the core of the Government of Canada’s foreign and domestic policies,” the Canada Summer Jobs 2018 website declares.

Manitoba Tory MP Bergen tweeted December 15:

“What  the Liberals are doing here is terrifying. No tax payers $ if you don’t believe/act the way the government dictates. Sounds more like China than Canada. Thought/ belief control by the State, in its worst form. What’s next for these organizations? Charitable status denied?”

Bergen joins Conservative MPs Brad Trost and Bev Shipley in speaking out against what critics are calling “ideological coercion.”

URGENT: Tell Justin Trudeau you oppose this attack on freedom of conscience. Sign the petition and send a postcard here!

Non-profit groups, small businesses, and public sector employers can apply for funding through Canada Summer Jobs to create jobs for students from 15 to 30 years of age.

The program officially opened December 19 with the new stipulation that to be eligible for funding, employers must attest that:

both the job and the organization’s core mandate respect individual human rights in Canada, including the values underlying the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms as well as other rights. These include reproductive rights and the right to be free from discrimination on the basis of sex, religion, race, national or ethnic origin, colour, mental or physical disability, sexual orientation, or gender identity or expression.

“The employer attestation for CSJ 2018 is consistent with individual human rights in Canada,”  states the Canada Summer Jobs 2018 website.

“The government recognizes that women’s rights are human rights. This includes sexual and reproductive rights — and the right to access safe and legal abortions. These rights are at the core of the Government of Canada’s foreign and domestic policies.”

The government also “recognizes that everyone should have the right to live according to their gender identity and express their gender as they choose, free from discrimination,” the website says.

The Evangelical Fellowship of Canada has also decried the Liberal policy as violating the Charter right to freedom of religion, thought, belief, opinion and association in a December 19 action alert on its Facebook page and website.

“Organizations unable or unwilling to make this attestation in whole or in part will be deemed ineligible for the grant,” the EFC said.

The program’s guidelines note that an organization being “affiliated with a religion does not itself constitute ineligibility for this program.”

But “if they cannot agree with the government’s position, they will not be eligible,” countered EFC.

Meanwhile, LifeSiteNews launched a petition and postcard campaign asking the Liberals to rescind the policy that has been signed by 7,500 people to date.

Campaign Life Coalition also launched a petition that has been signed by 2,934 people to date.

Conservative Leader Andrew Scheer’s spokesman, Jake Enwright, also criticized the move, pointing out that the Charter exists to protect individuals from the government, not the other way around.

“Canadians should be very concerned that the government of Canada is basing its funding decisions on whether or not you hold a certain belief,” he told LifeSiteNews in an earlier interview.

Formerly, individual MPs assessed and approve funding applications from groups in their ridings.

But Employment Minister Patty Hajdu made it clear last April she would change how the Canada program was administered after media revealed Liberal MP Iqra Khalid okayed summer job in 2016 grants for the Canadian Center for Bioethical Reform (CCBR).

Hadju also declared at the time no Liberal MP would approve job grants to pro-life groups for the summer of 2017.

As a result, Guelph Right to Life, Toronto Right to Life, and the Canadian Center for Bioethical Reform sued.

Last month, the Liberal government paid these groups the money they would have received through the program, CCBR’s Jonathan Van Maren reported yesterday.

The Trudeau government is also making organizations that support the LGBTQ2 community a funding priority, as well as employers who provide jobs for unrepresented groups such as indigenous youth, or for women in the science, technology, engineering and mathematics sector.

The Liberals announced in early 2016 they were boosting the summer job program with up to $113 million annually for three years. This has allowed the program to offer nearly 70,000 summer jobs to students from 2016 to 2018, as opposed to the 34,000 jobs created in 2015.

RELATED

Canada won’t fund student summer jobs unless employers support abortion

Trudeau gov’t forced to settle with pro-life groups over denial of summer jobs grants