Dear Alberta Lottery Foundation: We Have Questions

[This is a letter written to the Alberta Lottery fund on November 19, 2014, by Celia Posyniak, Executive Director, Kensington Clinic, Calgary. Some background on her concerns can be found in our series on public funding of three Alberta crisis pregnancy centres: Central Alberta Pregnancy Care Centre, Medicine Hat Pregnancy Support Society, and West Yellowhead Pregnancy Care Centre (Hinton). Links to CAPSS added.]

To Whom It May Concern:

I am writing to express my concerns regarding the awarding of lottery funds to so-called crisis pregnancy centres (CPC) in Alberta.

Specifically, my concerns are with the Hinton Crisis Pregnancy Association, the Medicine Hat Pregnancy Support Society and the Central Alberta Pregnancy Care Centre Society in Red Deer, all of which were awarded Community Spirit Donation Grants in 2011/12 totalling $34,000.

At least two of these organizations are members of the Canadian Association of Pregnancy Support Services (CAPSS), a “Christ-centred national ministry “whose primary mission is to discourage women from having abortions through the operation of crisis pregnancy centres and to share their faith in the process. CAPSS is the umbrella organization that provides training and resources for CPCs and members must agree to adhere to CAPSS mission and service delivery guidelines. For your convenience I have attached a copy of their “Core Documents”.[pdf]

CPCs exist to discourage vulnerable women from obtaining abortions and have been known throughout North America to use misinformation and scare tactics to achieve this goal. In fact, the Red Deer centre was once publicly exposed in an undercover operation by CTV’s W5, describing surgical instruments used in abortion as similar in appearance to “barbecue forks”. While they claim to assist all pregnant women and new mothers in need, through donations of clothing etc., the most recent issue of the CAPSS newsletter which I have enclosed, appears to lament this outcome as the majority of recipients were not “abortion minded or abortion vulnerable”.

CPCs generally do not employ health professionals or professional counsellors as these people would not be able to operate under CAPSS governing principles without violating their own professions code of ethics. CPCs claim they provide accurate information about abortion, but their code of counselling ethics forbids them from providing referrals. How can they be trusted to provide accurate information about a healthcare service in an unbiased manner, when they refuse for ideological reasons to tell clients where to obtain those same services?

It is difficult to understand how the government can on one hand support comprehensive reproductive healthcare services for women in the province, and then hand out money to organizations who would like to take fundamental reproductive rights away from women, promote junk science, refuse contraception information to unmarried people, and beyond advocating sexual abstinence*, make no contribution in the education of Albertans on safe sex practices.

To give this another perspective, would an anti-vaccination group be awarded public funds to promote their agenda against immunizations? Could a Jehovah Witness group be given funds to counsel the public on their ideological objections to blood transfusions while proselytizing?

Does the ALF have any eligibility criteria regarding an organization’s mission? What due diligence did the Alberta Lottery Foundation do to ensure that these CPCs were legitimate community assets and not religious organizations with a clear agenda of dissuading women from accessing a legal medical service and sharing their faith?

Thank you for taking the time to consider this and I look forward to your response.

Sincerely,

Celia Posyniak
Executive Director [Kensington Clinic, Calgary, Alberta]

*************

Good questions.

Celia reports that as of today there's been no response, but she promises to keep us informed.

If you'd like to pose some questions of your own, here's the contact information for Alberta Lottery Foundation.


* Link to Kathy Dawson's open letter to the mayor of Hinton about those "sex-ed" presentations.

Public Funding of Alberta Fake Clinics, Part 3

In our series, Hinton Crisis Pregnancy Association is last of the three fake clinics in Alberta that have received public funds from the Alberta Lottery Foundation.

(The others are Medicine Hat and Central Alberta Pregnancy Care Centre.)

Hinton CPC seems to be doing business as West Yellowhead Pregnancy Care Centre; the address is the same on its Canadian Revenue Agency (CRA) annual filings.

The first thing to know about Hinton is that it's pretty small, with a population of 9,640 souls as of the 2011 census.

Another thing about HInton is that it has a photo radar system, the proceeds of which are doled out to deserving community organizations. More on that in a bit.

And now we've run out of things to say about Hinton.

The fake clinic seems a bit shy for these sorts of organizations. Its website is under construction and its Facebook page is rather desultorily maintained.

It is a member of the Christian Canadian Association of Pregnancy Support Services, the umbrella organization that the Ontario Trillium Foundation had an "issue" with.

I found a profile of the outfit in the local paper from 2007.

The pregnancy centre is a faith-based organization made up of volunteers from various Hinton churches. Church members also make up the board that operates behind the scenes.
…
The centre is made possible by donations from churches, local businesses and the United Way. In addition, the centre does three fundraisers per year including a banquet in October, a baby bottle campaign and usually a spring fundraiser. . .

Giffin said that his organization hasn't had much luck obtaining government grants, but that they are going to try again.

Now to the CRA filings.

2011

2012

2013

Expenses and revenue seem to run at around $100K a year. That's pretty impressive considering that costs at the Medicine Hat fake clinic, with a population six times Hinton's, run about $60K. (Maybe Medicine Hat has competition? Maybe the sluts in Hinton are extra slutty?)

And hey look, the Hinton fake clinic has been successful in getting the government money they were coveting back in 2007.

Some of that would be from the Alberta Lottery Foundation. From 2009 to 2012, it received $50K from ALF or more than half of all such funds given out to fake clinics in the province.

But the really genius part is that it has tapped into another source of public funds -- the aforementioned photo radar tribute.

In April this year, the local paper reported that it had done rather nicely.

Quality of Life grants were doled out last week, with a total of $97,116 for 18 local community groups.

Town council approved the grants at the April 15 meeting. Nineteen applicants had requested $281,068 in funding, which is nearly triple the $100,000 available. Recommendations to council on how to award the available funds were made by the Grant Funding Advisory Committee, which has five voting members. Quality of Life grants are allocated from photo radar fees. . .

The West Yellowhead Pregnancy Care Centre received the largest amount of core funding applied for ($10,000).

So unsuspecting Albertans have TWO ways to contribute involuntarily to the fake clinic: through their lottery tickets and their traffic tickets.

If one is of a religious, anti-choice, misogynist bent, it's beauty. One can say: Well, sheee-it, I didn't win the lottery/I got a damn speeding ticket, but at least the money is going to a Christ-fearing, slut-shaming, human rights-denying outfit.

Of course, if one is not of a religious, anti-choice, misogynist bent, one might say: Well, sheee-it. WTF?

You gotta admire these Christers though. Tricksy with pregnancy/abortion information, tricksy with fund-raising.


h/t to Kathy Dawson for the photo radar link

Alberta Fake Clinics Sponging Public Money, Part 2, Medicine Hat

To continue our investigation into Alberta fake clinics sucking off the public tit (Part 1 on Central Alberta Fake Clinic here), let's look at the Medicine Hat Pregnancy Support Society.

It doesn't seem to have its own website and does not belong to Canadian Association of Pregnancy Support Services, the organization that the Ontario Trillium Foundation had a problem with.

It does have a Facebook page, which consists mainly of announcements of holidays on which they'll be unavailable to help any crisis pregnancies. For fun, here's its very goddy newsletter.

Things get interesting however, when we look at its finances. A site named CHIMP gets its information from the same place we do, the CRA.

This pie chart is fascinating, though. WTF does that mean?

But Chimp reports the 2013 data correctly. In 2013, Medicine Hat Haters spent 90% of their dough on management and administration, with 3% going to the "charitable program."

Note that they report 0% "government funding."

Now have a look at their filing for 2012. Then, they spent 95% on the charitable program and 5% on management, again reporting no government funding.

In 2011, again 95% went to the charitable program with no government funding.

Now, go back to the Alberta Lottery Fund and nose around a bit, you'll find that Medicine Hat scored government/pubic money as follows:

2012/13: $4500
2011/12: $6300
2010/11: $9300
2009/10: 0
2008/09: $4500
(figures are rounded to nearest hundred)

Two questions here:
1. Why are they not reporting government funding?

2. How the hell did they go from spending 5% on admin to spending 90%?

Honest mistake?

No flags were raised?

We will continue to ask questions.




h/t to Niles in the comments for the FB, CHIMP, and newsletter links.

Crisis Pregnancy Centres: Alberta Fake Clinics Get Public Money

As promised, we're taking a look at other crisis pregnancy centres (CPCs) in Canada that apply for and receive public funding.

Back here in our how-to identify and expose fake clinics getting public money, Kathy Dawson found that the Alberta Lottery Foundation (ALF) does indeed funnel money to CPCs.

Alberta Lottery Foundation is like the Ontario Trillium Foundation. It redistributes the province's ill-gotten gains to "worthy" community assets. (Or does it?)

It's got a ton of dough to hand out -- $1.486 billion in 2013-14 alone.

The website has a handy search function. Kathy used the search term "pregnancy" and look what she found.

Since 2008, ALF has given $93,200 of "involuntary" donors' -- i.e. Alberta's gamblers' -- money to three "pregnancy"-related groups: Medicine Hat Pregnancy Support Society, Hinton Crisis Pregnancy Association, and Central Alberta Pregnancy Care Centre Society (Red Deer and Olds). Most of the funding was for operations and all of the funds were doled out under the Community Spirit Donation Grant Program.

The Community Spirit Donation Grant Program supports the generosity of Albertans with a matching Donation Grant Program and the Enhanced Charitable Tax Credit.

There's not much information on this program on ALF's site, but it seems that not only are public funds involved in the grants, but Albertans fork out again in forgoing taxes on the donors' contributions in the form of "Enhanced Charitable Tax Credits."

Let's have a closer look at Central Alberta Pregnancy Care Centre. It's interesting for a few reasons. First, it's pretty rich for these kind of operations.

From its mandatory filing at Canadian Revenue Agency, in 2013, it reported revenue of just over $450K, with "government funding" $68,690 or 15%.

In 2012, it reported revenue of $442K and government funding of $95,879 (22%).

"Government funding"??????????????????

It was also the target of an undercover investigation in 2000 by CTV, which exposed the usual lies, manipulations, and misleading information. I can't find any of the original stories but I found an interesting "rebuttal" by Fetus Freak Media outlet The Interim.

The Central Alberta fake clinic can also boast of the fact that one of its founders is Valorie Day, Stockwell Day's wife.

Here is its mission statement:

The Central Alberta Pregnancy Care Centre is a Christian charity dedicated to upholding the sanctity of all human life. We help women, their partners, and their families to explore all pregnancy options; giving access to accurate information and the space and time needed to make a well informed decision.

The Centre does not perform, refer, or advocate for abortion. However, we are committed to unconditional acceptance of everyone we serve, regardless of their choices.

It is also a member of Canadian Association of Pregnancy Support Services, you know, the umbrella organization that the Ontario Trillium Foundation had a "philosophical" issue with.

The decision came after pseudonym-using blogger Fern Hill reached out to OTF Oct. 29, confirmed Thomas Chanzy, vice-president public affairs.

“The issue that was raised when we looked into that grant more deeply was the affiliation with CAPPS, the Canadian Association of Pregnancy Support Services,” he said.

So, if you live in Alberta and buy lottery tickets, you are willy-nilly supporting these lying liars. If you live in Alberta and don't buy lottery tickets, your tax dollars have to stretch just a bit farther because you are underwriting donations to them.

Later, a look at the other two publicly funded fake clinics in Alberta.