Religious leaders call for end to Trudeau’s rights-based job funding rules
Posted Jan 26, 2018 05:11:04 AM.
This article is more than 5 years old.
OTTAWA – Religious leaders are calling on Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to reverse a policy requiring organizations to pledge their respect for abortion rights and the rights of L-G-B-T-Q Canadians before they can get money for summer jobs for youth.
Representatives of nearly 90 Christian, Muslim and Jewish groups have sent a letter to Trudeau, urging him to accommodate the “diversity of values and beliefs” in Canadian society.
The federal government has said organizations seeking summer job funding will have to affirm that neither their “core mandate” nor the job itself oppose human rights, including those related to abortion, sexual orientation and gender identity.
The religious leaders say the government ought to target the specific groups at the root of those concerns.
Catholic Toronto Cardinal Thomas Collins says if the government has a difficulty with a particular group doing something which they feel is not acceptable, then it should speak to that group.
He said it’s unfair to put in a kind of wide-open ideological test for everybody.
Speaking in Ottawa, Employment Minister Patty Hajdu suggested that wasn’t possible.
