Dear Editor: I’m pretty sure that the Liberal federal government really does welcome applications from faith-based organizations for financing from Canada Summer Jobs, as a letter Feb. 5 from MP Gudie Hutchings has said the Liberal government really does.
For that “fe’ral” government would be receiving with those applications — in the form of the attestation it requires that the organizations which apply “are not carrying out any discriminatory activities” — a tacit admission that these faith-based organizations are wrong to oppose certain pet policies of the “fe’ral” government. The organizations would at least be acting as if they were wrong and the government were right, and it is often said that actions speak louder than words.
I have no doubt, therefore, that such applications are welcome, indeed, to our federal Liberals.
There is, though, one thing in MP Hutchings’s letter about which I would raise a question: When she objects to hiring of young people to distribute brochures to shame women into never choosing abortion, does she mean that these brochures tend to deceive women into feeling ashamed when they are disposed to seek abortions or am I right to infer that she feels insisting on certain actual facts about abortion tends naturally to provoke shame in those who pursue or promote it?
Also, it might be helpful if someone in government were to clarify whether “the attestation” is meant to attest only that persons hired with money from Canada Summer Jobs will not be paid to carry out “any discriminatory activities” or whether it is deemed to imply, for instance, that a parish itself which hires students under the program is never doing any activity of that sort.
For if the attestation were deemed to carry the latter implication, a church organization with clergy preaching against certain kinds of what their church deems sin might then be charged with obtaining CSJ money under false pretenses after submitting “the attestation.”
One cannot be too careful at all when one is dealing with politicians as delicately subtle as Justin Trudeau seems to like to seem.
Colin Burke, Port au Port
