Mr. Speaker, it is a pleasure for me to have an opportunity tonight to address the attacks on religious liberty and freedom of conscience that we see from the current government. The Liberals have altered the Canada summer jobs program to require that any applicants check a box indicating their agreement with certain propositions. That affirmation is about the private convictions of those groups, not about their activities or their willingness to comply with the law.
Governments always make determinations about what activities they wish to fund, but it is unconscionable in a free society to say that people should be denied the ability to access government services or programs on an equal basis simply because of their private convictions. However, that is the contention of the Liberal government, that faith-based and secular organizations alike should be denied access to public services on the basis of their wish not to positively state their agreement with certain propositions that happen to be important to the government.
This policy responds to no problem or need. It is a mean-spirited attack on the private convictions and liberties of organizations that do excellent work helping the most vulnerable across this country. We are seeing the impact of this policy. Over 1,000 organizations were denied funding this year, with at least one secular not-for-profit organization announcing that it will close its doors as a result of funding lost through this policy.
We are seeing perverse outcomes. We have an organization openly advocating hate against minority groups that did receive the money and organizations that do uncontroversial good work being denied the money. Those who are genuinely hateful apparently do not have a problem lying when they check the box. The only effect of this policy, then, is to screen out the genuinely good and honest who refuse to violate their convictions for 30 pieces of silver.
What is striking to me about this debate, as well, is that we have a government in this country that finds the very idea of conscience to be baffling. The Liberals have said, and the parliamentary secretary, I suspect, will say again in response to my question, something to the effect that faith-based organizations are eligible, and many have received funding, and by the way, there is more money in the program than ever before. The Liberals genuinely do not understand that people of conscience will not check a box that contradicts their convictions, even if they are told that it is meaningless and to check it anyway.
The many Catholic organizations, in particular, that provide help to refugees, prisoners, the sick, the elderly, and children honour St. Thomas More, who preferred execution to signing an attestation that violated his conscience. More's friends tried to persuade him to change his views or cede to compromise, but at least they understood the idea of conscience that informed his actions.
The government, as it is about to reveal in response to this question, has so lost its moral ground that the members cannot conceive of people refusing to sign something they do not agree with to get some money. The Liberals not only lack the constraints of conscience in this case, they fundamentally fail to understand what conscience is. The problem is not one of immorality but of amorality. The idea of firm, unrelenting convictions exceeding self-interest is simply not part of their comprehension.
This has, I believe, wider consequences beyond the particulars of this issue. It is not a surprise to me that the first prime minister in Canadian history to have broken ethics laws while in office is also one who seems so confounded by the notion of conscience.
Whether groups are theoretically eligible, the demand that they sign a form attesting to things they do not believe is an unavoidable impediment to groups that disagree with the particulars of this attestation. Free societies do not demand to know what my private convictions are before I receive public services, and it does not matter how much money is in the program. It matters that the government is hell-bent on discriminating against people of conscience and conviction.
In 2019, we will give Canadians a better option, a party made up of people who disagree with each other on a range of different issues but who fundamentally respect the section 2 guarantees in the Charter of Rights and Freedoms; who respect freedom of conscience; and who believe that great societies are those in which people are free to disagree, to countenance unpopular opinions, and to stand on their convictions.