Mr. Speaker, I am very excited to see the parliamentary secretary here today. He is the kind of person with whom I would like to have this type of conversation. I have a feeling he and I probably might find a balanced approach to what we need to do with the Canada summer jobs program.
I will start with the question I asked initially when we came back in January of this year, following a very tumultuous and contentious Christmas, when we started to talk about the Canada summer jobs program. I will read the question I asked that day so I can remind members where we were with this conversation. I asked:
Mr. Speaker, despite being forced to settle a constitutional court case regarding Canada's summer jobs last year, the Liberals are attacking the very people they claim to help.
By forcing groups to sign the Prime Minister's values test, the government is denying help to groups that provide aid to refugees, run day camp programs for kids with disabilities, and help at-risk youth. On behalf of these organizations from across Canada, will the Liberals finally remove this values test from the Canada summer jobs application?
That was the beginning of this conversation. When we are in question period, a lot of things are being put out there. However, instead of having a reply, indicating that the Liberals did not think it was the best option to be giving advocacy groups, it was the idea that I would not support the rights of women. It was absolutely ludicrous. With the parliamentary secretary here today, I know we will have a much better conversation and I really expect that. The issue is the discussion that carried on.
On March 1, I had the pleasure of putting forward a motion to the House of Commons, asking the government to fund the Canada summer jobs programs for day cares and for a lot of groups that were doing advocacy for their hometowns, for their communities. We have talked about the day camps. We have talked about helping prepare meals for seniors or coaching a kids' soccer teams I have heard of a lot of Canada summer jobs students who have participated in activities like that. This is really a great program. For years, I worked with the prior member of Parliament for Elgin—Middlesex—London on these programs so know the types of results we had. We had great jobs and great kids coming out of these programs.
However, this year the government decided to put in the attestation. The problem I have is that one day the Liberals are saying no to our faith groups and the next day they are saying yes to our pipeline protestors. It makes no sense. I ask the Liberals to pick a side and go with it. They cannot have both.
Part of the problem is that the Liberals are talking about the attestations and then say they have put in an explanation, that people can sign the attestation because there is an explanation of what the government is doing as long as people are not doing something that is anti-abortion or anti-LGBTQ. The fact is that people are not signing the summary of what they can and cannot do. They are signing an attestation. Many people look at it as a legal document about their beliefs and they cannot attest to that.
Because of all of this, I went back and looked at the community funding for the last 13 and 14 years in Elgin—Middlesex—London. Not one single time did the organizations fund anti-abortion, pro-life, or anti-LGBTQ. However, this year alone 35 different organizations did not apply for funding, and the majority of those did not apply because of the attestation. They were against what they thought the government was doing.
Does my hon. colleague believe the Canada summer jobs program should have returned to the old ways or does he think this has become a huge boondoggle because of the attestation?