Wednesday 28 September 2011

Fetus Lobby® Stamps Its Widdle Feet

Oh dear. During the recent federal election big-mouth Contempt Party back-bencher Brad Trost bragged that because of his hard work, the International Planned Parenthood Federation would ^NOT be funded under Motherhood Steve's Maternal Health Initiative.

Well, it seems IPPF will get funding but only for projects in countries where abortion is illegal.

Not good enough for Brad-Boy. He threatened last week to make a strong statement and now he has (emphasis mine).
Response to Federal Government's Decision to Fund IPPF

Late in the afternoon of Thursday, September 22nd, I received a phone call from the Prime Minister's Office (PMO) about a news story on the CBC that had run earlier in the day. The CBC reported that the federal government had approved funding for the International Planned Parenthood Federation (IPPF).

A PMO staffer explained to me that the story had not been accurate when it ran, but due to the day's events, the CBC story was mostly accurate now. Apparently, six staffers in CIDA Minister Bev Oda's office had been working on a grant to fund IPPF -- and one of them decided to leak the story to the CBC.

Rather than deny the story, a decision was made to rush funding to IPPF to the tune of $6 million over three years. (I was told that the funding letter was sent out at 4 pm that afternoon.)

People have asked how funding IPPF squares with the repeated statement that Canada will not fund abortion internationally. The PMO attempts to square this circle by only permitting IPPF funding to go into countries that ban abortion.

Considering that promoting abortion internationally is central to the identity of IPPF, this sort of political hairsplitting only seems to make sense in the Ottawa bubble. This is a position I totally reject.

Since 2006, Conservative MPs have been asking to have IPPF defunded.

In 2006, our request that federal funding for IPPF be stopped was ignored because we asked politely--and behind closed doors.

In 2009, we became more aggressive and began to take our campaign public.

Many, many Conservative MPs pressed the PMO to stop the funds from flowing. Federal funding did stop for a time. Funds allocated to IPPF were considerably reduced. Furthermore, federal grants for IPPF also had more strings attached.

This only happened because of the pressure applied. This was a real victory.

Bureaucrats have fought for years to keep the status quo and continue the funding of the IPPF that was established by the Liberals.

The battle over the IPPF continues.

Pro-Life politicians have been taught a lesson.

The government only responds to Pro-Life issues and concerns when we take an aggressive stance.

We will apply this lesson.

Hmm. Seems Brad and other members of the Fetus Lobby® don't have quite the clout they thought they did.

Awkward, isn't it?

And doesn't it make you proud to be Canadian? Our Fetus Lobby® cannot defund or recriminalize abortion here, so they try to punish a good organization doing good work for desperately poor women and children in war-torn countries, one of them, Afghanistan, war-torn in our name.

Media coverage: CBC and Macleans, with the title 'Brad Trost Goes Rogue'.

This should be fun. Stevie Peevie does ^NOT enjoy backtalk.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Bureaucrats fought, Mr. Trost? I thought you guys were the government. If your party can dictate terms of employment for postal workers and threaten to do the same for the private airline industry, then I'm sure you can dictate funding to non-governmental organizations.

Maybe he should look at the internal operation of his party, if somehow MPs aren't being permitted to do their jobs as he sees them. Is it democratic, or is it centralized party control when candidates like Rob Anders are somehow selected against the will of the local riding association? If there is an "Ottawa bubble", the Conservative MPs are the ones strengthening it by ending debate, meeting behind closed doors, ignoring questions in favour of talking points, and always, always voting the party line.

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