Churches and other Christian employers continue to be the target of the Justin Trudeau Liberal’s discrimination initiative when it comes to hiring summer interns, per documents obtained by Blacklock’s Reporter. The Department of Employment previously required applicants for its Canada Summer Jobs grant to sign an oath of agreement on Liberal policies surrounding issues such as abortion — or miss out on funding. In 2017, Trudeau’s government ordered all applicants for summer student grants, regardless of what field the job is in, must sign a federal oath supporting “the right to access safe and legal abortions” — but was sued by Toronto’s Right to Life Association and Calgary’s Centre for Bio-Ethical Reform. After a total of 1,559 applicants who refused to take the oath were denied funding for summer students, the feds settled out of court and in 2018, Cabinet rewrote the oath to require applicants to pledge to “respect individual human rights.”However, in 2021 Redeemer University College of Hamilton, ON was denied funding after Trudeau’s Liberals deemed it “high risk” for Christian values. Church representatives are now petitioning the House of Commons human resources committee to push back against the discriminatory practice, calling out federal officials for moving the process into secrecy. “We are now concerned the values screening has moved behind closed doors,” the Evangelical Fellowship of Canada wrote MPs, per Blacklock’s. “The review process involves a case-by-case assessment of applications that can be subjective, arbitrary, inconsistent, unpredictable, lacking in transparency and which in some cases seems to involve ideological screening. We have heard from enough faith-based groups that we are concerned these are not just isolated incidents.”Federal employees are still “flagging some faith-based groups’ applications for review or deeming them ineligible for Canada Summer Jobs grants,” the fellowship continued. “There is little transparency or consistency. We see that in this process sometimes groups are being flagged because of their beliefs, not their actions.”It detailed several complaints accusing the department of “looking for reasons” to deny applicants. “An applicant involved in providing summer camp to hundreds of children was informed of a Google review in which a parent complained their child, a camper, got a sunburn at day camp,” wrote the fellowship. “This triggered a Service Canada request for proof of workplace safety.”“Some faith-based groups have been asked to provide their statements of faith and to explain their religious doctrine and some applicants also describe being subject to excessive scrutiny.”The Canadian Centre for Christian Charities complained the feds singled out Christian churches to ask extra, unrelated questions surrounding why they want to hire a certain student. “For example, churches are asked why assistant ministers or similar ministerial roles need to adhere to a doctrinal statement or statement of beliefs,” the centre wrote. “The perception of different treatment for religious charities is not without merit,” wrote the Centre. “This perceived differential treatment is most often experienced by way of follow-up requests that focus almost exclusively on the applicants’ religious beliefs.”
