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So the unconstitutional values test is gone. And “undermine or restrict” is sufficiently vague in regard to “rights legally protected” that I would imagine almost anyone could attest to that. I suppose it would exclude an environmental group hiring a student to protest Kinder Morgan — sorry, the federal government —building the TransMountain pipeline. That would seem to undermine a legal right.

But of course it’s not about such things. As it always is for this government, it’s about abortion. So we read under “ineligible projects and job activities” that is it prohibited to “actively work to undermine or restrict a woman’s access to sexual and reproductive health services.”

If you might be confused about what “actively work” might mean in practice, rest assured that it will be interpreted by the same minister and same bureaucrats who rammed last year’s attestation down applicants’ throats.

The government does not want to fund pro-life groups who advocate an alternative view to the government’s abortion policy. Consider how extreme that policy is. If you think that Canada should have the French, or German, or Swedish, or Indian abortion policy, that would mean a restriction on Canada’s current anything-goes legal environment. This past year, if you held, say, the Swedish position on abortion, you could not apply for the summer jobs grant without lying. This year, you would have to ensure that you were not “actively working” to bring the Swedish policy to Canada.