OTTAWA, December 15, 2017 (LifeSiteNews) — The Justin Trudeau Liberal government’s requirement that employers attest to their support of abortion and transgender “rights” to receive summer job grants for students is “totalitarian,” says a constitutional lawyer.

“This policy amounts to ideological coercion and violates the Charter freedoms of expression and association,” says John Carpay of the Calgary-based Justice Center for Constitutional Freedoms.

The new criteria were sent to all MPs and will be made public when the Canada Summer Jobs Program officially opens December 19.

In order to receive federal Canada job grants, 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 new criteria will be posted online when the program opens December 19.

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.

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

The Liberals made the change “to prevent Government of Canada funding from flowing to organizations whose mandates or projects may not respect individual human rights, the values underlying the Charter of Rights and Freedoms and associated case law,” states the information package.

“Additionally, these changes help prevent youth (as young as 15 years of age) from being exposed to employment within organizations that may promote positions that are contrary to the values enshrined in the Charter of Rights and Freedoms and associated case law,” it reads.

“This change helps to ensure that youth job opportunities funded by the Government of Canada take place in an environment that respects the rights of all Canadians,” it stated.

The Liberals are also making organizations that support the LGBTQ2 community a funding priority, and are focusing on employers who provide jobs for unrepresented groups such as indigenous youth, or who provide jobs for women in the science, technology, engineering and mathematics sector, according to the information package.

According to Carpay, the new Liberal policy demonstrates a totalitarian impulse.

“In a free society, every person and group must obey the law, but nobody is required to support any given law, or even an underlying principle. Free societies permit citizens, and all kinds of citizens’ associations, to disagree with the law, and to express disagreement,” he told LifeSiteNews in an email.

“The law can compel you to respect a speed limit, and punish you when you violate it. But to require people to support speed limits, or to say that they support speed limits, is totalitarian.”

Formerly, it was up to individual MPs to assess and approve funding applications from groups in their ridings.

But after media firestorm in April year over revelations Liberal MP Iqra Khalid approved summer job grants to pro-life groups in 2016, Trudeau’s government decreed no Liberal MP would do so again.

Moreover, official word from employment minister Patty Hajdu at the time was that she would change the way the summer job program was administered to prevent pro-life groups receiving funds in the future.

Jack Fonseca, senior political strategist for Campaign Life Coalition, echoed Carpay’s warning.

“This is no minor tweak to a federal program. This is a ground-breaking first step on the inevitable path to raw totalitarianism and open persecution with the sanction of the state,” he told LifeSiteNews in an earlier interview.

“Once the government implements this unconstitutional, anti-Christian policy, the next thing will be that the private sector will take it as permission to do the same thing,” Fonseca said.

“Perhaps first with supplier contracts. But eventually, private sector employees will be required to sign such a declaration which essentially, is a way of getting Christians to disavow their beliefs.”