Public Funding of Fake Clinics in Alberta: The Wrap

We have some catching up to do.

We revealed that public funds from the Alberta Lottery Fund were being handed over to fake clinics and profiled the first lucky fake clinic, Central Alberta Pregnancy Care Centre Society (Red Deer), here.

Part 2 on Medicine Hat Pregnancy Support Society. And Part 3 on Hinton Crisis Pregnancy Association.

We published a letter by Celia Posnyiak asking Alberta Culture about that funding and another asking the mayor of Hinton about its creative additional funding of local fetus freaks through photo radar money.

We heard from the mayor of Hinton.

And now, after nearly a month, there's been a reply by Carl Royan, Director, Community Grants, Alberta Culture, to Celia's letter.

After some introductory blah-blah:

The Community Spirit Program aimed to partner with Individual Albertans who donated monies to eligible nonprofit organizations by providing those organizations wit proportional grants based on the donations received. [Names of three fake clinics queried] met the Community Spirit Program (SCP) eligibility criteria, received donations from individuals [sic] Albertans who supported their activities, and therefore qualified for funding under the program. As you may know, the SCP was discontinued as a result of a budget decrease the department faced in Budget 2013.

Followed by signing-off blah-blah.

Everyone agrees that this response is about what was expected.

Well, heck, when the mayor of Calgary points to the stereotype of Albertans as "hillbillies", who are we to disagree?

And we would never ever pull some central-Canada-superiority shit by highlighting the timely and responsible action of the Ontario Trillium Foundation when it found out it was funding Ontario hillbillies.

So. There's no joy in Hillbilly Land, but that doesn't mean we're going to stop.

In fact, our search of the handy Alberta Culture database that turned up the original three fake clinics was flawed. We used the key word "pregnancy". We should also have used "pro-life" because looky here.

Under the same Community Spirit Program, Edmonton Pro-life Society got just over $23K in 2008/2009.

I'm absolutely sure it fits the eligibility criteria too, which seems mainly to be that these outfits are duly accredited as charities by CRA, the same gang that allows the Fraser Institute to operate as a charity.

From its CRA filings, the Edmonton fake clinic's costs and revenues run about $70-80K a year. And it consistently reports "government funding" of between 10-15% of total income. Rather nice for them.

But in 2010, it reported a whopping 25% of revenue from government.

Now, lest we get carried away and believe the BS that Edmonton Prolife offers anything like accurate medical information about all options, have a look at this.

An abortion, intending to end the life of the child, never has to happen. It is never the only option. So why do people have abortions?

There are many reasons why women or couples decide to have an abortion. An internet search will yield various results, statistics, and percentages, citing socio-economic reasons, not wanting children or any more children, fear of health risks, and many others.Abortion takes an innocent human life, and the gravity of that fact cannot be mitigated, it is important remember that many factors can go into an abortion decision, such as fear, desperation, and ignorance (the person(s) have perhaps become convinced by others whom they trust that the preborn child is not a living human being).

For those people who wish to see Abortion, we provide the following information.This video is not pleasant, but it must be seen. Hundreds of innocent unborn children are torn to pieces every day in Canada because most people simply don't know what abortion actually does. With the exception of the final scene (a second-trimester fetus), all of the video you will see depicts children who were killed during first-trimester abortions.

That's the intro to a link to 4-minute video with a warning that it's disturbing. They don't warn that its also full of manipulative bullshit.

If we had the time, we'd try to investigate where that consistent 10-15% of revenues labelled "government" actually comes from.

But we don't. And it looks like Alberta is fine with its unique "culture."

Next up, we have been informed that two fake clinics in BC also get lottery dough.

Maybe BC will prove a little more enlightened.

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.

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.