Joyce Arthur's libelous attacks on Pregnancy Care Centres

There would be massive repercussions to Pregnancy Care Centres and other pro-life charities if they were to lose their charitable status. From Pete Baklinski:

"Over 40 percent of our country’s registered charities advance religion. If these 32,000 religious charities — including churches and religious-based groups which operate soup kitchens, shelters, refugee homes, and food banks — were to suddenly lose their charitable status, they would be forced, according to Canadian law, to pay a revocation tax, which is predetermined to be equal to 100 percent of the value of the organization’s remaining assets."

All their assets. Poof. Gone. Pure evil. 

And this from a recent interview Rabble did with Joyce Arthur, the lobbyist who has been lobbying the government for years with her unfounded attacks on Pregnancy Care Centres. All emphasis added:

"Originally we were looking for a way to stop CPCs in general from getting charitable tax status maybe revoking status from those that already had it. In the end we actually took a softer line and ARCC was lobbying the government about this for many years....how it went is that the bill would have to transparency disclose whether or not they would provide abortion or contraception and they would have to do that in a very clear way, all their pubic facing material, clients on phone etc. and really we were just calling for them to be honest you know the way they always claim to be honest, so like what's the problem, right? We were calling their bluff in a sense. So it wasn't about saying oh if a CPC misinforms, then you are going to have your charitable tax status revoked, the route we tried to go but it became too difficult because how do you determine what is misinformation and whose science is correct and all that kind of stuff and that's not a job for the CRA right? 

And apparently the CRA lawyers and the finance lawyers who looked at the solution requiring them to disclose properly sort of gave the thumbs up and said we can manage this, i.e. if there is a charter challenge to this law we can defend it cause we wouldn't want the law thrown out of court for being unconstitutional so I think it was a really good compromise in that sense, it would have worked and not really any grounds for the anti-choice groups to complain about it because calling on them to be honest like they claim to be, so it was just too bad that it got dropped..."

"They deliver with a big dose of biblical morality. If you're going to pretend to provide care to pregnant people, the least you should do is provide accurate information. Guilting them, shaming them, scaring them, and confusing them, all these really negative things, which are all totally opposite to the way good patient care should go."

Arthur is a master at misinformation and disinformation as she continues her hideous attacks on these centres. You would think the government would verify Arthur's false claims before bowing to her unrelenting hatred of all things pro-life.

Unredacted ATIP reveals abortion advocate's disinformation

It is interesting what gets hidden in an ATIP. Usually of course you have no idea what they are hiding because the hidden information is redacted. But recently I had occasion to ask for two different ATIPs about the Abortion Rights Coalition that were about a year apart. I received some duplicate information from them. The first one contained certain redacted information that the second one did not redact. 

The unredacted information revealed that the redacted info from the first ATIP, was ARCC telling their usual unrelenting falsehoods about pregnancy care centres.

This is the text that was redacted from the first ATIP from a letter from ARCC to the Minister of Health on April 4, 2018:

"...Further, it would help to dispel harmful myths about abortion and mitigate the effects of misinformation spread by anti-choice groups. Over 290 anti-choice groups exist across Canada, including about 165 “crisis pregnancy centres” (CPCs)....Most agencies have websites or do other public outreach, and all provide misinformation about abortion and work to reinforce stigma. Further, CPCs often mislead or scare women seeking abortion while advocacy groups seek to recriminalize abortion, which would violate women's charter rights."

Redacted information about CPCs

Unredacted information on CPCs

Two questions. 

1) Why was this information redacted from the first ATIP? The three Information Act clauses cited don't seem pertinent (19 (1), 20 (1) (c), 20 (1) (b.1)) to the redaction. And if they should have been redacted, why weren't they in the second ATIP?

2) Were the bureaucrats embarrassed (as they should be) when they saw this disinformation about pregnancy care centres, so they redacted "all [CPCs] provide misinformation about abortion and work to reinforce stigma"?

Here is another statement from meeting notes ARCC had with MP Don Davies from July 4, 2017 that was redacted from the first ATIP, but not the second ATIP:

"...The idea is to have a central, reliable place that women can go to, mitigating the effects of misinformation provided by "crisis pregnancy centres" and anti-choice groups."

More libelous nonsense.

(Here's a true statement no one can argue with, and is definitely not a lie: All abortion clinics kill babies.)

Fun Fact: My first ATIP took them 442 days to process and contained 11 pages. The second one took 396 days to process and contained 20 pages and produced similar information as the first. Don't let anyone ever tell you that ATIPs are ever processed in 30 days.

19 (1) Subject to subsection (2), the head of a government institution shall refuse to disclose any record requested under this Part that contains personal information.

• 20 (1) (c) information the disclosure of which could reasonably be expected to result in material financial loss or gain to, or could reasonably be expected to prejudice the competitive position of, a third party; or

• 20 (1) (b.1) information that is supplied in confidence to a government institution by a third party for the preparation, maintenance, testing or implementation by the government institution of emergency management plans within the meaning of section 2 of the Emergency Management Act and that concerns the vulnerability of the third party’s buildings or other structures, its networks or systems, including its computer or communications networks or systems, or the methods used to protect any of those buildings, structures, networks or systems