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In an Applicant Guide, it is further stipulated that “The government recognizes that women’s rights are human rights.” (Surely no one now contests that and the point need not be laboured.) However, “This includes sexual and reproductive rights — and the right to access safe and legal abortions. These rights are at the core of the Government of Canada’s foreign and domestic policies.” No application would be considered without the attestation being checked as agreed to by the summer job program applicant.

Photo by Jeff McIntosh/CP

The attestation was added to requirements this year when the Abortion Rights Coalition of Canada complained last year that some grants were made to anti-abortion organizations. This was declared by the federal Employment Minister, Patty Hajdu, to have been an “oversight,” and the attestation was added as obligatory for any application under the program to be considered this year. Many churches, secular organizations and people do not agree that the right to an abortion should be so absolutely entrenched. Both the prime minister and the employment minister claim that the rights of such groups and individuals are not infringed because the right to an abortion is deemed by the government not to be in any organization or person’s “core mandate.”

The government has no standing to tell any Canadian citizen or resident or group composed of citizens or residents what their “core mandate” is. The attempt to do so is already being litigated by the Toronto Right to Life Association as an infringement of the Charter, which does guarantee an almost unlimited freedom of opinion and very broad freedom of expression. The government has also taken unto itself as an executive prerogative of junior officials of the ministry of employment to determine arbitrarily what the “underlying values” of the Charter are. They have no such jurisdiction, and they should not be bandying about this obnoxious misnomer “reproductive rights.”