by Brid, on Gript
Religion and pro-life advocacy are both under sustained attack by many western governments and politicians. This week Conservative MPs in Canada had to present a petition in the House of Commons calling for the rejection of the plan by the Liberal Party to strip places of worship and pro-life organisations of their charitable status.
The issue arose from a recommendation of the Liberal-controlled Finance Committee seeking the striping of charitable status from these groups. The legislation would amend the Income Tax Act to “no longer provide charitable status to anti-abortion organizations” and to provide a definition of a charity which would remove the privileged status of ‘advancement of religion’ as a charitable purpose.”
Three Conservative MPs – Andrew Lawton, Jacob Mantle, and Garnett Genuis – defended places of worship and pro-life charities against Liberal recommendations to remove the institutions’ charitable status for tax purposes. The MPs stated that “these recommendations are fundamentally anti-religious freedom and anti-free speech” as they advocated for “the complete protection of charitable status regardless of these ideological litmus tests.”
Jacob Mantle, who is a newly elected MP, added that Canadians “lament that some members opposite are so blinded by their animus towards charitable organisations that they would seek to undermine the good works that these groups do for the most vulnerable Canadians”. He lamented that the Liberals “seem not to care for the fundamental freedoms protected in our Charter of Rights and Freedoms: the freedoms of belief and religion”.