Paul Tuns:
Pro-life researcher Patricia Maloney, who blogs at Run for Life, revealed that the Abortion Rights Coalition of Canada (AARC) lobbied the federal government to restrict pro-life activism by stripping pro-life groups of their charitable tax status, a policy that the Trudeau government would later propose.
Maloney revealed that according to the Canadian Registry of Lobbyists, AARC director Joyce Arthur had urged several federal government agencies to financially squeeze pro-life activities by rescinding their ability to provide tax receipts for donations. Last October, the Trudeau government proposed requiring pregnancy care centres to advertise whether or not they provide or refer for abortions, and those centres that did not comply would lose their charitable tax status.
Official filings indicate that Arthur first registered to lobby the federal government on March 6, 2016, and that she has lobbied Canada Revenue Agency, Finance Canada, Health Canada, the Justice Department, Employment and Social Development Canada, Women and Gender Equality (WAGE), the House of Commons, and the Prime Minister’s Office.
On Oct. 29, 2024, The Minister of Finance, Chrystia Freeland, announced the government would table legislation affecting pregnancy care centres by amending the Income Tax Act and Income Tax Regulations to protect “reproductive freedom by preventing abuse of charitable status.”
The 2021 Liberal Party Platform claimed that pregnancy care centres trucked in misinformation about the services they provide and about fetal development in order to prevent abortion-minded women from accessing abortion.
In Arthur’s petitions to Ottawa, she called for “stopping federal government funding of anti-choice groups, including through job programs and their charitable tax status.” Arthur said the hope was that by denying pregnancy care centres from issuing charitable tax receipts, their donations would dry up.
In 2018, the Trudeau government required all companies, charities, and non-government organizations to sign an attestation of support for so-called reproductive rights as a requirement to receive money through the Summer Jobs Program that subsidized the hiring of students. The government later backtracked slightly by dropping the attestation but banning pro-life groups from receiving Summer Jobs Program funding.
The program is administered through Employment and Social Development Canada, which Arthur lobbied.
While Arthur and the ARCC lobbied for all pregnancy care centres to be denied charitable tax status, it has been reported that the federal government went with a washed down proposal to require such centres to advertise whether they are pro-abortion or not as a requirement for charitable tax status after government lawyers questioned the constitutionality of a blanket ban. ARCC has criticized the half-measure saying that banning pro-life pregnancy care centres from being registered charities would pass constitutional muster.
Campaign Life Coalition director of communications Pete Baklinski tweeted that Arthur’s organization, the ARCC, “has been spreading misinformation about pro-life pregnancy centres for years.” Baklinski said, “This anti-life group appears to despise that organizations exist to offer women choices other than abortion. It wants to shut them down,” he wrote in a post on X, formerly Twitter.
Baklinski explained, “The Trudeau Liberals listened to ARCC, putting forward a plan to strip pro-life organizations of their charitable status using talking points similar to ARCC’s,” even if the government did not make the same proposal as ARCC to strip pregnancy care centres of their charitable tax status. “Why is the Federal government taking advice from an organization that promotes preborn baby-killing?” Baklinski wondered.
The Registry also states that Arthur lobbied the federal government to clamp down on New Brunswick’s policy of not funding abortion at private abortion facilities. In 2019, Ottawa announced it would withhold part of its health transfer to the province as punishment for not paying for abortions committed at free-standing abortion mills.
Maloney said of Joyce Arthur, “it will be interesting to see once Pierre Poilievre becomes Prime Minister how effective her lobbying efforts will be.”
Maloney has also reported that the federal government has funded Joyce Aruthur’s work. Last August, Maloney revealed that through her Access to Information and Privacy searches, projects that Arthur and ARCC were associated with have received nearly $90,000 from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC), including $28,792 for a report on “Abortion Attitudes and Access: Building A Canadian Framework for Reproductive Justice,” $25,000 to explore “the impact of belief-based denial of contraceptive or abortion care on those seeking services: A multi-methods qualitative study in Canada,” and $25,000 to explore “the impact of belief-based denial of Medical Assistance in Dying (MAiD) on those seeking services: A multi-methods qualitative study in Canada.” For the MAiD report, Arthur partnered with the pro-euthanasia group Dying with Dignity. Arthur was a collaborator on a project that received $11,000 from a pair of SSHRC programs, the Partnership Engage Grant and the Knowledge Synthesis Grant.
Furthermore, Elections Canada filings show that ARCC spent $9,984 on partisan activity in the 2021 election campaign, presumably to support the Liberal Party.
Campaign Life Coalition national president Jeff Gunnarson told The Interim that Maloney’s work “suggests a cozy ‘you-scratch-my-back-I-scratch-yours’ relationship.” He said that the next government must not rely on Joyce Arthur for advice on abortion policy.
