DON’T TELL US WHAT TO BELIEVE
On the first anniversary of Donald Trump’s inauguration, the president indeed behaves like a one-year-old. But behind the embarrassing tweets, foul language and regular White House hissy fits lurks a strategy to reshape American politics and culture.
On Friday, Trump warmly addressed the annual Washington March for Life anti-abortion rally via video link. Defenders of women’s autonomy over their own bodies shivered at his pledge to work to undo their hard-won access to abortion.
Well, thank goodness we live in Canada, you might conclude, where our leader feels quite differently. Not so fast. Canadians face a weird, looking-glass version of the shift taking place in the U.S.: a prime minister leveraging the abortion issue by stealth to make people sign on to his version of Canadian values.
Justin Trudeau’s government has changed the requirements for organizations seeking support from the Canada Summer Jobs grant program, which creates temporary employment for young people. To access funding, groups now must agree to respect women’s reproductive rights, including the right to abortion.Faith groups that oppose abortions say they can’t meet this requirement. This means some institutions won’t be hiring many young people this year.
Opposing abortion isn’t illegal, and we believe that most of those who hold anti-abortion views sincerely seek a better world. Like capital punishment, or assisted dying, abortion is an issue about which people are often deeply divided. Political parties may have their own membership rules — the federal Liberals require their candidates to support choice — but when governments dole out public money, they have no moral right to shut out taxpayers or organizations that do not endorse their values.
The change to the Canada Jobs Grant program was brought to light by the faith organizations affected, not by the government, some of whose members are now claiming the requirement doesn’t mean what the language says it means.
Is it unfair to draw a Trudeau-Trump analogy on this issue? If the Trudeau government has overstepped, isn’t it only a minor transgression? No. Trump, in his bumptious fashion, at least acknowledges overtly that there are differing views; he wants his side to win. The Liberals acknowledge no divide; they assume that their values are everyone’s values. We don’t want access to abortion curtailed. But we don’t want government to dictate what we must think about it, either.