The document was obtained by Postmedia News through access to information and emerges at a time when several Conservative backbenchers are agitating to have abortion added to the parliamentary agenda despite the government's objections.
In September, the Canadian International Development Agency quietly revealed it had approved $6 million in funding over three years for International Planned Parenthood Federation projects in five countries: Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Mali, Sudan and Tanzania.
CIDA Minister Bev Oda's office said none of the IPPF projects being funded by Canada would include abortion.
But critics, including three Conservative MPs, noted the NGO is a strong advocate for safe abortions in developing countries and alleged the funding decision did not fit with the government's own promise that the Muskoka Initiative would not support abortion.
"People have asked how funding IPPF squares with the repeated statement that Canada will not fund abortion internationally," Saskatchewan Conservative MP Brad Trost said in a statement on his website on Sept. 28.
"Considering that promoting abortion internationally is central to the identity of IPPF, this sort of political hairsplitting only seems to make sense in the Ottawa bubble. This is a position I totally reject."
The CIDA document says the decision to provide IPPF funding was made after staff measured the project proposal against the "Muskoka Initiative's priorities."
However, it also shows officials were very conscious of a delineation between what constituted Muskoka Initiative projects and other maternal and child health projects that lay outside the initiative's ambit.
"The International Planned Parenthood Federation (IPPF) did not receive funding under the G-8 Muskoka Initiative, as the proposal was submitted before the Muskoka Initiative was announced," reads one statement. "Rather, IPPF received its funding as part of CIDA's ongoing commitment to improve maternal, newborn and child health."
The comment is repeated several more times and is also used to explain millions in Canadian funding to the United Nations Population Fund, which has been similarly targeted by pro-life groups for supporting safe abortions in developing countries.
A spokesman for Oda confirmed Tuesday that CIDA is providing $1.1 billion in "new funding" for maternal and child health between 2010 and 2015 through the Muskoka Initiative, and $1.75 billion in ongoing spending he described as "pre-Muskoka."
But Justin Broekema did not explain why the distinction is made or whether projects approved under the "Muskoka Initiative" label have different criteria than those outside.
Trost said Tuesday that whether the funding to IPPF was part of the Muskoka Initiative or not, the "spirit" of the government's promise should still apply.
"Whether or not the very fine letter of the promise is broken or whether or not the spirit is broken, I don't think the general public sees it differently," he said. "A taxpayer's dollar is a taxpayer's dollar, whether you stick a black label or a blue label above it."
Mary Ellen Douglas of the Campaign Life Coalition alleged the distinction was an attempt to stickhandle around the government's promise not to support abortion with the Muskoka Initiative.
"It seems a bit devious," she said.
Abortion has started to become a prickly issue for the Harper government in recent months. While the prime minister and senior ministers have indicated they do not want to wade into social debates, a number of Conservative backbenchers have started raising it independently.
Trost made headlines earlier this week for questioning the "ironclad" party discipline that he says is stifling debate in Ottawa on issues like abortion.
Fellow Conservative MPs Maurice Vallacott of Saskatoon and Stephen Woodworth of Kitchener, Ont., meanwhile, have issued their own news releases on the subject, with Woodworth planning to hold a public news conference in Ottawa on Feb. 6 to debate the definition of "human being."
Original Article
Source: canada.com
Author: Lee Berthiaume
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