OTTAWA—The Toronto Right to Life Association is taking the federal Liberal government to court over its decision to limit Canada Summer Jobs Program funding to groups whose “core mandate” respects charter rights, including the right to have an abortion, according to government officials.

Two officials who spoke to the Star say the Liberal government hasn’t yet received the formal papers but has been advised the group filed an application for judicial review Friday with the Federal Court.

For years local MPs set out which groups would be given priority to receive funding under the jobs program.

The Liberals say that under that system, groups which promoted anti-abortion or anti-LGBTQ messages applied for and got federal money, including anti-abortion groups such as Campaign Life Coalition, Life Site News, Priests for Life, and the Canadian Centre for Bioethical Reform.

After a review last summer, the Liberal government revised eligibility criteria for the program. It now requires that the “core mandate” of an organization “must respect individual human rights in Canada, including the values underlying the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms.”

The government’s website says the new criteria does not exclude churches or faith-based groups, but it does say the group’s work must respect Charter values including “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.”

To be eligible, a group must sign an “attestation” that its core mandate respects those fundamental values.

The change prompted anger among many. Campaign Life coalition declared on its website that the Trudeau government wants people to “renounce your faith.”

“Trudeau is using the Canada Summer Jobs Program to compel and coerce Canadians to renounce their deeply held religious or moral beliefs, in exchange for federal funding,” said Jack Fonseca, spokesperson for Campaign Life Coalition, in a statement posted online. “This reeks of a deep-seated, anti-religious bigotry. Increasingly, Justin Trudeau is transforming the Liberal party into a hate group against Christians, whom he clearly wants to suppress. This program change must be stopped.”

Reached late Friday, a spokesperson for the Toronto Right to Life Association said the lawsuit argues the group’s charter rights to freedom of conscience and religious belief, to free speech, and its right to equal treatment under the law are violated by the government’s new requirement that it sign the attestation before it can be eligible for money.

“We believe we shouldn’t be treated unequally because we hold different beliefs from the government on a social issue,” Blaise Alleyne, president of the volunteer board, said in an interview. He said the group received $10,000 from the summer jobs program in 2016, and was eligible but denied funding in 2017 for an “unspecified reason” — and sued over that denial.

That claim was settled in November, he said, with the group receiving its funding request for the same amount as the previous year.

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He said forcing the group to sign an attestation amounts to the government compelling speech, adding “our conscience does not allow us to sign.”

Employment Minister Patty Hajdu’s office said Friday the government is “committed to ensuring that youth job opportunities funded by the Government of Canada take place in an environment that respects the rights of all Canadians, and ensuring that federal funding supports employment opportunities that respect existing laws, including human rights law and labour law, to which public, private and not-for-profit organizations are already subject,” according to a statement by Hajdu’s spokesperson, Carlene Variyan.

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