Changes to a federal summer jobs program has left local faith-based organizations feeling a financial pinch after they were asked to check a box that supports all Charter rights, including women's reproductive rights and LGBTQ rights.
Local faith-based organizations are disappointed after changes to the Canada Summer Jobs program have left them without summer students or having to find alternative sources of revenue to fund their summer programs.
Tom Anderst, senior pastor at Sturgeon Valley Baptist Church, said that their church believes the freedom of religion was not recognized this summer when applying for summer jobs.
“We believe that it is elevating the Charter rights of particular groups above the Charter rights of a faith community,” Anderst said.
The Canada Summer Jobs program sparked a national controversy, pitting some religious organizations against the federal government after the Liberals required any organization applying for funding for summer students to support all Charter rights.
Applicants filling out the forms are required to “attest that both the job and the organization’s core mandate respect individual human rights in Canada,” which includes respecting reproductive rights and preventing discrimination based on religion, sex, sexual orientation.
The move is characterized as “deeply disturbing” by Wendy Lowe, the Senior Pastor at the Next Christian Community Church.
“It is a huge issue of religious freedom,” Lowe said.
The attestation is asking religious organizations to have the same ideology as the government or they cannot apply for federal funds, Lowe said.
“What they are asking you to do doesn’t have to do with how you practice or being inclusive with who you serve, which all of these organizations are happy to serve anybody. It’s saying you must have the same ideology that the government has or you can’t apply for federal funds.”
Lowe’s organization does not require summer students this year, but she said that even if they did, they would not be able to agree to the attestation to receive the funding.
Along with feeling frustrated, the move has alienated faith-based communities across the country, Nick Onyschuk, area director for Young Life St. Albert said.
“By doing what they did they alienated and isolated a large population of people and I think that it is pretty foolish,” Onyschuk noted.
While some people find the move alienating, others say the move has been a long time coming.
Kris Wells, LGBTQ advocate and faculty director with the Institute for Sexual Minority Studies at the University of Alberta, said that the attestation was long overdue and that it has been received positively in the LGBTQ community.
“We believe it is entirely appropriate for the federal government to restrict funding to organizations that want to use public tax dollars to discriminate,” Wells said.
The groups are not being restricted from doing their work, Wells added, but rather they are restricted from accessing pubic funds to “continue to discriminate against vulnerable communities.”
But Lowe said that a large amount of the charitable work done in any community is run by faith-based organizations that deliver services to marginalized groups, including the elderly and homeless populations. These organizations rely on funding for summer students to continue to run their programming, Lowe said.
In St. Albert, organizations that did not receive funding will likely have the biggest impact on children and the post-secondary students who run day summer programming for the kids in the community, Lowe said.
Surgeon Valley Baptist Church decided to not apply for summer students this year due to the attestation and lost out in $11,531 in funding.
Anderst said that church remains committed to providing its summer services and this year they will be funding their own summer students and paying them the same amount that the government did from the year before. The students run kids' programs throughout the summer, including day camps for a week in July that brings in between 150 and 170 children.
“We believe that the rights to freedom of religion were not recognized in the attestation,” said Anderst, who added their organization could not agree to the attestation to get federal funds.
Other organizations, like the Young Life organization in St. Albert, also did not apply for federal funding this year due to the attestation but its national organization will be fundraising to make up for the money.
Last year the St. Albert location of Young Life received $15,522 in federal money for two summer students. This year they will only have one student, with funding coming from the national fundraising efforts. Area director Nick Onyschuk will have to do the rest of the work himself.
The students previously fund-raised, planned, organized and ran camps for teens through the summer along with running weekly programs for teenagers. Onyschuk was also able to get a jump start on fall planning with the help of the two students, which is the area he thinks will suffer the most with the loss of the summer employee.
Across Canada, there has been no consensus on the issue and it has divided Canadians.
Half of Canadians feel like the changes are “unfair”, while the other half say the move is “fair” according to a survey conducted by the Angus Reid Institute.
Canadians are divided on party lines with 68 per cent of past Conservative voters say the attestation policy is unfair and over-reaching, while 59 per cent of Liberals and 56 per cent of NDP voters say that the requirement is fair.
All of this has been unnecessary, Onyschyk said, and added that if the government had an issue with the practices of specific groups, they should have communicated it to those groups rather than change the requirements for the entire program.
“I don’t think any of this needed to happen. If this was not the government’s intent than just leave it as it is,” Onyschuk said.
