Stephen Harper has vowed that a Conservative government will never endorse anti-abortion legislation while he is in power, but he refused to disclose his personal view on abortion Photograph by: Geoff Robins , AFP/Getty Images

SASKATOON — A Conservative incumbent says he stands by his statements that he helped convince the Harper government to withdraw funding from an international organization that provides abortions around the world.

Saskatoon-Humboldt candidate Brad Trost told an audience at the University of Saskatchewan Thursday that he is "very, very proud of the work" that he did to help "defund" the International Planned Parenthood Federation.

"We've been able to defund it for the last 16 months," he said at an all-candidates forum.

Trost's comments come just as his leader, Stephen Harper, tries to distance his party from his anti-abortion comments.

"I know (Harper) has no interest whatsoever, as does most of the cabinet, in opening the abortion issue," Trost said.

During a campaign stopover in Conception Bay South, N.L., Harper vowed that a Conservative government would never endorse anti-abortion legislation as long as he is in power.

Conservative operatives also tried to suggest Thursday that Planned Parenthood's funding had not been cut but was simply delayed.

International Co-operation Minister Bev Oda issued a statement suggesting that if the organization applied for funding and did not request cash for abortions, it would receive money.

"If Planned Parenthood submits an application that falls within the government's parameters for the G8 Muskoka Initiative, there will be funding," she said in the statement, referring to Harper's maternal-health plan, touted as the centre piece of last year's global summit.

Paul Bell, a spokesman with the International Planned Parenthood Federation, said for the first time in some 40 years, it looked like Canada would not help fund the organization's work.

Bell said an $18-million application for a three-year core funding grant submitted in 2009 was ignored. The group also still hasn't heard back from the Conservative government regarding its funding request in 2010 for a $6-million grant.

That application fell within the lines of the Muskoka Initiative and did not include funding for abortion, Bell said, in an interview from London, England.

"What this government has made clear is that it won't fund actual abortions, so that is what our bid was based on," Bell told Postmedia News. "I know that last year, (Trost) was pushing this hard anti-Planned Parenthood agenda and it is the kind of rhetoric that we observe all the time coming out of the U.S.

"It is the same language, it is the same tactics."

The anti-abortion movement in the U.S. is also an anti-contraception movement, Bell said, which tries to make Planned Parenthood appear to be purely an abortion provider.

In reality, Bell said, 97.9 per cent of its services are not abortion-related and most of its work is focused on family planning.

"We are hopeful that this government will fund us," he said. "This same party in power and this same prime minister did fund us in 2007, 2008, 2009, and we've been funded in the past, whether by Conservative or Liberal governments or coalitions."

Harper acknowledged Thursday that there are members of the Conservative caucus who don't support abortion. "In our party, as in any broadly based party, there are people with a range of views on this issue," he told reporters.