Many of us had not heard of the Canada Summer Jobs program until the government decided to reform it.

It’s designed to fund short-term contracts for secondary and post-secondary students and for years went largely unnoticed, until the revelation that groups opposed to abortion — some of them vehemently so — were receiving generous financial support.

A woman’s right to choose, of course, is one of the fundamentals of Canada’s health care, legal and moral framework. So to correct matters, a clause was added asking applicants to attest that their “core mandate” respected Charter of Rights values.

Hardly draconian stuff. And remember, some of the groups involved compare abortion to the Holocaust, distribute flyers containing graphic and bloody images to people’s homes, even when children might see them, and refer to abortion as murder. Their language is violent, extreme and directly contrary to Canadian virtues.

Even so, there are now several legal challenges to the government, with those opposed to the amendment claiming that it’s an attack on religious freedom and human rights. The actual results of the new policy, however, paint a radically different picture.

Official documents show that of the 2,728 faith-based organizations that applied for summer jobs funding this year, 58 per cent were willing to sign the attestation. Of the 115 Anglican groups that applied, only 10 refused so sign, and only two of the 199 United Church-affiliated organizations refused. Even more startling, none of the 89 Jewish or 130 Muslim groups withheld their support. Which leaves evangelical groups and, of course, Roman Catholics.

Opposition to abortion has become an absolute of conservative Catholic opinion even though, it should be noted, Canadian Catholics in general do not share this view and progressive Catholics have a far more nuanced approach.

Also, there is far more ambiguity in the Catholic response to the program than we have been led to believe. Contrary to what many critics of the policy have claimed, of the 365 Catholic organizations applying for funding, the overwhelming majority signed on, with less than a third (32 per cent) refusing to do so. When we break down those figures, a clear pattern emerges.

In all of Quebec, only nine Catholic groups refused to sign and a massive 108 agreed to the attestation. In Ontario, 63 groups refused to sign, with 32 agreeing to do so, and the vast majority of dissenters, 52, in Toronto.

Why so many refusals from one denomination, and in one area? The only distinguishing and exclusive feature is that Cardinal Thomas Collins, one of the most outspoken critics of the government’s action, is the Archbishop of Toronto and represents 83 per cent of all of the Catholic organizations that refused to sign. He recently told a Vatican press official that, “No government has the right to have an ideology test on anyone. That just isn’t fair.”

Truth cries out to be heard! If this genuinely were an ideology test, it wouldn’t have been signed by so many Roman Catholic and religious groups. It’s hard to escape the conclusion that this may have as much to do with the imposition of authority as with an independent religious response. When the attitude of the Catholic groups not under Cardinal Collins is juxtaposed with those within his influence, the contrast is quite extraordinary.

We also need to ask whether the reason these groups refused to sign the agreement is principle, or whether some might have wanted to direct the summer program money into the very anti-abortion activities that provoked the government in the first place. If the latter, this would be extremely duplicitous behaviour.

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One last point, and it involves hypocrisy. One of the rallying cries of opponents of the attestation has been that the government is indulging in discrimination. Yet how many of the organizations refusing to sign the clause would hire LGBTQ2 students or those in same-sex relationships or, for that matter, straight people living together outside of marriage? Judging by their records, statements, and religious ideas, very few indeed.

Nobody is going to claim that the new policy has been altogether smooth, in design or implementation. But there is logic and law to its reasoning, and its opponents are, to say the least, being extremely selective with the facts.