Wednesday 19 November 2014

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.

6 comments:

Niles said...

And this is why FH and DeBee are the ace investiGators.

There are risks to the information age but there are also opportunities to highlight connections that misleading parties would rather keep unknown.

I see the gaslighting has already begun. The Lamda clinic 'rebuttal'. I wonder if their public message is handled by individual clinics or if they have a central message that needs to be vetted by PR handlers.

choice joyce said...

Wow, that's a lot of money! Good for Kathy for uncovering this, and thanks to you for publicizing it.

Celia Posyniak has a 2012 FB comment here with info on the W5 expose of 2 Alberta CPCs: https://www.facebook.com/calgaryprochoicecoalition/posts/237038749707095 That was all I could find.

Niles said...

I don't know if this is interesting or not. This is a site that breaks down charities, with the page for the Medicine Hat clinic that received grant monies in 2013.

https://chimp.net/charities/medicine-hat-pregnancy-support-society

On that page, it notes just under half of the revenues are from 'other charities'. On the expenditures side, it shows 90% of monies brought in go to management and administration.

3percent of expenditures goes to programs. of that 3percent, there's a chart that breaks down oddly to only 30percent where 20percent goes to food and clothing banks and 10 percent goes to low income services.

That seems...well, when I'm looking at a charity to donate to, if their admin costs are that high...is that a charity anymore?

Maybe someone more experienced can explain this to me?

Niles said...

Just for fun. the Newsletter of the MedHat clinic. It's very very obviously Christian based, which isn't surprising since the document is stored on the website of a local church "Christ the King Assembly". www.ctka.ca

http://www.ctka.ca/docs/library/Newsletter1.pdf

but they also have a Facebook page that has posts that address grants monies and fundraisers down around the january dates.

https://www.facebook.com/M.H.Pregnancysupportcentre

fern hill said...

Here's Joyce's link to Celia Posnyiak's FB comment.

That is so despicable but typical CPC behaviour -- running a person around with lies and delays and further appointments until it's too late for a simple, early abortion. THEN they have the unmitigated gall to whine about late-term abortions, when their tactics CAUSE later-term abortions.

fern hill said...

Niles's links:
Medicine Hat Pregnancy Support Society. Love the pie chart: it adds up to 30%.

Medicine Hat Pregnancy and Family Support Centre newsletter (PDF). Very goddy.

Medicine Hat FB page. Seems mostly to consist of announcements that they'll be closed for Thanksgiving, Labour Day, etc. Can't be expected to deal with crisis pregnancies on holidays, I guess. Seem quite keen on Financial Freedom classes though.

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