September 27, 2019 (LifeSiteNews) – There is no shortage of commentary on Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s foreign policy legacy. With the recent cancelation of the 2019 Munk Leaders Debate on foreign policy, on account of Trudeau’s refusal to attend, Canadians will be sorely deprived of an important opportunity to see his policy challenged in a substantive way. Opposition parties have criticized the Trudeau government on several accounts: Trudeau’s failure to uphold a decent working relationship with Canada’s closest and most important ally to the South, the United States of America; his continued involvement in arms deals with Saudi Arabia; his alleged fraternization with Sikh separatists during his time in India; his handling of the arrest of two Canadians by the Chinese government on charges of espionage.
While these are all grave matters and worthy of scrutiny, what nobody is talking about is his foreign policy on the issue of abortion and its propagation throughout the world, which not only has major social implications but has had financial consequences for taxpaying Canadians.
The Trudeau government has made many statements about the primacy of abortion in its policy both at home and abroad but none were as brazen as this: In 2017, while outlining Canada’s new foreign policy priorities in the House of Commons, abortion was proclaimed a Canadian value and was said to be “at the core of [Canadian] foreign policy,” by the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Chrystia Freeland.
And if, by chance, the words of the Trudeau government were not enough to convey their obsession with abortion and reproductive ‘rights’, their superfluous international spending habits are enough to make abortion a universal pandemic.
On March 2, 2017, in direct response to President Donald Trump’s reinstatement of the Mexico City Policy, the Trudeau government joined a Dutch initiative to fill the $600 million “gap” caused by the Americans’ withdrawal of taxpayer dollars from international organizations that either commit or promote abortion. Canada announced that it would be giving $20 million to five pro-abortion organizations, including Marie Stopes International, which is rife with controversy and claims of ill-practice and abuse, including the accusation of committing abortions illegally.
On March 8, 2017, the Canadian government announced a $650 million commitment over three years, for Sexual and Reproductive Health and Rights (SRHR). A government backgrounder lists the areas where the money would be spent. These included safe and legal abortion services, advocacy activities, addressing social norms, and removing judicial and legal barriers to SRHR. The efforts to change social norms and laws abroad reveals the core of Trudeau’s abortion agenda: to change the value system of other nations and circumvent their democratic and legislative process. A spokesperson for the party confirmed that ‘barriers’ include anti-abortion laws. This reeks of ideological colonialism. The imposition of Canadian “values” on the developing world.
Little more than three months later on June 9, 2017, then Minister of International Development Marie-Claude Bibeau announced $1.5 billion over five years in international assistance to support Canada’s Feminist International Assistance Policy. The policy seeks to address the supposed “lack of comprehensive sexuality education and family planning services [and the] restricted access to contraception and safe abortion.” According to Bibeau, the government’s goal was to ensure that by 2021-22, 95% of Canada’s international development aid efforts fell under the purview of this new feminist mandate.
Finally, on June 4 of this year, Trudeau announced at the Women Deliver Conference in Vancouver that, if re-elected, the Government of Canada would increase their spending on “international sexual, reproductive, maternal, newborn and child health,” until reaching a total of $1.4 billion annually in 2023. The incremental increase in spending would start immediately and the government pledged to maintain the $1.4 billion annually from 2023 until 2030. The amount of funds allocated to sexual health and reproductive rights would increase from $400 million to $700 million, meaning that half of Canada’s total spending on international aid for women’s and children’s health would go “to ensuring women have access to safe abortions and reproductive-health services worldwide.”
At the United Nations, where Trudeau has been campaigning for a seat on the Security Council (at the cost of $1.5 million on special gifts for foreign dignitaries and travel costs), he has aggressively pushed for abortion, and lobbied for universal acceptance of SRHR. For the past four years, he and his government officials have been attending conferences and meetings, to boast of Canada’s abortion funding in the developing world, and have been criticizing international governments for their apparent lackluster approach to “women’s rights.”
Instead of bringing Canada BACK to the world stage, as he claimed he would do when he was first elected, over the course of his tenure, he has tarnished our nation’s reputation, and driven away many of our allies, of whom the US is of foremost importance. If progress at the UN is achieved by consensus, Trudeau’s religious devotion to abortion has successfully increased the already significant divides between international leaders. Many question the objectives of Canada’s international foreign policy and are unable to reconcile with our apparently single-minded focus on the controversial issue of abortion when there are so many other pressing international demands.
If it is true that people invest in the things that they believe in, then the Trudeau government believes in the intentional killing of pre-born human beings. If Trudeau gets his way, Canadian taxpayers will spend at least $7.1 billion by 2030. This Prime Minister has singlehandedly made Canada the world’s foremost promoter of ideological colonialism.
Emily Price is a guest contributor to LifeSiteNews. She works at Campaign Life Coalition as the Global Policy & Research Coordinator.